


The Temptation of Azra Fell

by Nimravidae



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (debatable) - Freeform, General Corruption and Temptations, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), Long Discussions of the Role of Biblical Stories, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind fuckery, Priest Aziraphale, The Power of Love and True Names, after the apocadidn't, mind wipe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: At first glance, it appeared that Crowley — a demon who had been on Earth alone for six thousand years — had been sent to complete the most simple of temptations: that of a rather soft middle-aged priest named Azra Fell.Some two hundred and fifty years ago, Agnus Nutter prophesied He is Not that Which He Says He Is.It would seem, in an unsurprising twist of events, she was incredibly Correct.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [triedunture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/gifts).



> Imagine, if you would, a man has just sat to play a song on the piano. Something familiar, warm, and friendly.
> 
> In dedication to the incredibly wonderful, kind, talented, and most-hilarious-person, Triedunture

It had been a long time since Crowley had done any sort of, well, anything himself.

His approach was much more hands-off, let the humans do it to themselves.  Much more satisfying that way, he just pointed out the path of rage and wrath and let them wander down it. Normally he would just stick a few ducks in the middle of the road and let traffic back up until everyone was proper steaming. But this one Hell wanted done quickly and Crowley was caught not looking busy enough (which is to say he was not busy at all. But he had, over the centuries, become very good at  _ looking  _ busy. Particularly when demons were watching) and was, thus, assigned this. 

None of that  _ little bits of evil over long bits of years  _ sort of business that kept Crowley back home in time to terrorize his houseplants. For some reason, some inexplicable, indescribable, inexpressible, another-in-word Crowley simply did not have ready at the moment, reason—Hell wanted this one done  _ personally.  _

Properly.

A  _ by any means necessary  _ sort of deal. Not that Crowley didn’t know what they were suggesting when they said it. 

Well. They meant by force or by Crowley getting his proverbial fingers into that priest's brain and making a few administrative changes. Crowley himself decided to get a good look at him first before deciding if he was going to interpret it rather differently. All creatures of angel-stock had the choice to stop being sexless if they just made an effort.

An effort Crowley made quite,  _ quite,  _ some time ago.

And really, why waste the effort of making An Effort? 

If Hell wanted it done, it’ll get done. 

Which, they very much did want it done. They even said they’d send someone to  _ check.  _ As if he can’t be trusted to corrupt a priest. Surprisingly, their lot was the most easily tempted and tarnished all you need to do is drop a pretty girl (or boy, frequently enough) and wait. The sunshine reflecting on a thigh or a chest is usually all it takes to tarnish the soul with the implacable and twisting spector that is lust. 

That this needed monitoring was, in itself, an absurd requirement. Crowley had been alone up on Earth for over six thousand years at this point. Never once did Heaven peep, send some weak little principality out looking for him to thwart him at every turn. Or at least, if they had at no point was said angel smart enough to actually catch up with him.

Though he wouldn’t put it past Heaven to toss some poor bugger down there, little direction, ever actually checking up on the work he did. For all Crowley knows all the churches in Poland are the work of one solitary, desperately confused angel trying to make good enough with Gabriel and Michael that they’ll let him back upstairs to stay. 

In Crowley’s case it’s quite the opposite. He was never much a fan of Hell. He preferred clean, empty spaces and artful decor not additional  _ remember you’re here for an eternity which is so long that your tiny maggot brain can’t even comprehend what an eternity is  _ sighs (which, Crowley thought to himself as he casually waved a hand, letting a man think that keeping the wallet he just found isn’t such a bad idea, how they get all of that on a sign is beyond him. One of those few good innovations of Hell). The better work he did up here, the less often he was stuck downstairs in the crowded, festering pits. 

That’s not to say that Crowely’s a particularly  _ bad  _ demon (bad at being a demon, that is. To be a bad demon is quite the compliment) — he’s actually an awfully  _ good  _ demon (good at being a demon. To be a good demon is quite the insult. And a rather good way to get one very quickly destroyed). He blemishes souls of otherwise perfectly alright people, he causes torment and just the right amount of evil without actually sending the world splintering apart in a grand show of fire and flame. 

Even if he takes an awful lot of care to not look like a demon. He doesn’t fester or rot or  _ ooze.  _ He rarely wears all-black, he rarely wears any mortal clothes at all. What he does is conjure up himself an outfit, whatever he’s feeling. The only piece of mortal clothes he actually  _ owns  _ is his jacket. An off--off-white leather pilot jacket. He’d passed it once, hanging in a shop window and something about the color drew him in instinctively. 

Like a proper demon, not only did he buy it, but he also signed up for a rewards card when he did — just pushing the number of registrations high enough that the owner of the establishment gleefully decided to keep the program going, much to the chagrin of those doing the actual selling. 

Crowley does technically own  _ two  _ jackets. The one other isn’t his but he found it once in his bedroom and hasn’t had the mind to toss it yet. 

This is a long, winding way in which to say: this temptation has to truly be perfect.

Which is, of course, made all the more difficult that he can’t actually step  _ into  _ the church. 

Consecrated ground has a tendency to burn. And Crowley isn’t so keen on spending so much time in such close vicinity to holy water and bibles and crucifixes. All the general things that could destroy his very essence if used properly. 

That meant no bursting in and kneeling, accepting flesh that isn’t in the form of a dry biscuit, and being done with it (that is not to say that before the time of consecration and relics Crowley hadn’t done something rather similar in nature with an incredibly difficult-to-break holy man and a few glasses of wine). 

This has to be different. This has to be  _ artful.  _

What sort of art that would be, Crowley has no idea. 

He stands at the edge of the consecration, where one toe over starts to sting, and stares up at the towering building before glancing around it. It’s the nice sort of red-brick and wrought iron that looked like exactly what it was while simultaneously not being so overdone it stood out horribly (though how  _ underdone  _ it was outside likely did not match the appearance inside). 

The location was fine, walking up the road to sniff out how close he could stand he’d passed a few little shops, a cafe or two, a couple shuttered up businesses, a clothing place, a sex shop, and a bookshop all in a closed up little row. 

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, mulling over what sort of temptation this should be. Maybe he could stalk the priest, sort out his daily routine, watch from behind the occasional newspaper or lamppost or tall women until he’s certain what sorts of breakfast places he likes, or dinner, or even back to his flat. 

Yeah, Crowley could see that now. Get a place just beneath or above the priests, start crowding his space, running into him in the halls, out wherever he shops, on the street. Steal his mail and drop it off with a half-lipped smile, cut his water during the middle of his shower and force him to his neighbors, learn his routines and his favorite snacks and favorite drinks and lure him in steadily.

Let him catch glimpses of people having fun, of Crowley in less-than-saintly-fashions. Deposit little dreams and thoughts in his mind, like topping off a sweet glass of wine. Slowly untying all the tightly-laced bounds that kept his priestly vows together.

The priest wouldn’t even know his soul was becoming more and more tarnished and corrupted every moment he spent thinking about Crowley, like a sort of slow-growing cancer stuck right into his soul. 

Absolutely artful, fantastically evil. Just perfect. Crowley certainly is an epitome of satanic works. Hastur should  _ kneel  _ before him. 

Plus, quite the kind of fun temptation that, well, Crowley sort of has been missing since the time of Wilde and Douglas. (That’s not to say he hasn’t had his fair share of  _ fun  _ since then. But it’s not the same if you’re not luring anyone to their damnation with it. These days everyone he finds at the less-than-discreet gentlemen's clubs are already incredibly tainted)

Perfect, then that’s what he’ll do. He turns on a snake-skin heel right into a white-haired man in a cassock. 

“Oh, hello,” the man says, giving a cheery wave. “You know you can go in, right? You won’t burst into flames or anything.” He points behind Crowley, who gets the distinct impression the man is talking about the church. Which, well, he is right. Crowley won’t burst into flames. At least not immediately. 

Crowley waffles, stepping half a step back out of the priest's way. He looks him up and down from behind his dark sunglasses, “Not… not really, no.” He’s got wild white-blonde hair, sticking up in every which direction, as if he’s been struck by lightning or caught up in a windstorm. He’s older, sort of softer, than Crowley would have imagined. Sent out to tempt a priest to corruption, usually they’re the younger ones. More malleable that way, fresh out the gate. Crowley drags his gaze up to soft blue eyes. 

Nothing about him is rigid, hard, or stern. He strikes Crowley as surprisingly yielding. Something about him is familiar, almost violently so, like he knows he’s seen this face before but he cannot place it. He wracks his mind but he can’t come up with it. “Are you the uh, the new priest here? Father…” 

  
“Oh! I am. Azra,” He says, sticking a hand out. “Azra Fell. But Azra is more than acceptable, Fell for a priest sounds a bit,” he gestures with his hand, which Crowley looks at for a moment, parting his lips and rolling his tongue in his mouth to get a good taste of the air (some snake traits are incredibly difficult to fix. Like the eyes. If Crowley focused hard enough there was just the slit of his pupils — he couldn’t do much about it entirely but he could make it a bit less outwardly obvious. If his focus slipped it was full-on serpent. The same could be said for what happens to the nape of his neck and down the length of his spine during these periods).

After a quick taste, he tries to restrain the low noise in the back of his throat. Smelled holy. Incredibly holy. Incredibly familiar. His hand is far too warm when Crowley shakes it. He chalks it up to being a man who regularly handles holy water and tries not to let the squirmy sensation in his stomach last more than a few moments. “Lovely to meet you, then, Azra.” Now that lands clunky. 

For a moment, Crowley is absolutely certain he’s gotten his name wrong already. It sits funny on his tongue, tasting bitter and sour and not at all right. But Azra gives him a benign smile, staring for a bit, head tilted before Crowley clears his throat. “I’m Crowley.” The priest blinks these far too innocent eyes and it takes him a moment to remember his first name. “Anthony Crowley. But really it’s just Crowley.” 

“Well, Crowely, lovely to meet you. I’m new so I haven’t formally met all the parishioners.” 

“Oh, I’m not… “ Crowley gestures up to the church. “Not even a little bit.” 

“Ah. Not part of the faith I take it,” Azra says with only a thin veil of judgement to it. “May I ask why not?”

Crowley rocks on his heels, debating how to do this. It’s not that he’s rusty (well maybe a touch at tempting priests. He really hasn’t done  _ this  _ in a while. Everything else? Perfectly recently.) “I was. Long, long time ago. Didn’t find it too compatible.” 

Azra looks him up and down, giving him that placid smile again. Crowley watches him take in the cream-colored leather jacket, the plunging heather grey t-shirt under it, the too-tight trousers, the branded snake on his temple. His lips form a little  _ oh  _ like something’s just clicked. “The church is much more… welcoming now. Of all sorts.” 

Crowley looks down at himself. Well. The priest isn’t so far off. At least he quit the pierced ear thing back in the nineties. Wasn’t a good look at all. He rubs his ear, frowning a little at the memory of it.

“Do you,” Azra tilts his head towards the door, clearly interpreting Crowley’s introspection as something. By all accounts, he should be brushing him off as a lost cause and moving right along with his business. But he doesn’t. He lingers, feet shuffling and eyes flickering from Crowley to the door then back again. Like he’s waiting for something but he isn’t sure what. 

Probably a sign from God. That’s his lot, always waiting for a sign from God. 

As if She could be bothered to guide someone clearly along any sort of path. 

All Crowley can do is frown. “Do I what?”

“Want to come inside,” Azra asks. “I have some time, dear.”

_ Dear.  _ Crowley’s brow makes an appearance over the top of his sunglasses. The affectionate little nickname rings in the back of his mind, bouncing around like a screensaver on a computer for a moment or two before landing, hard, right in the center of his thoughts.  _ Dear.  _ Funny thing. 

The priest blinks there at him, looking like some particularly dense — if not just on the right side of sort of handsome, if not usually Crowley’s taste — cow. “Well?” he asks, gesturing in a sort of  _ oh, after you,  _ sort of way. 

He weighs the benefits and finds them absolutely landing in high favorability. This priest is certainly worth The Effort. It’ll be faster like that anyway, if Crowley’s being quite honest with himself. Traipsing with a demon really was a one-way ticket off the cliff into oblivion. 

Still, he looks down at the invisible line of demarcation. “Really can’t,” he says, hands searching his empty pockets blindly. 

“I just thought, well, you’ve been hovering outside for nearly an hour now. Might need the invitation.” 

Has he now? Crowley cranes his neck around to find a clock. “Well, I’ll be saved it really has been an hour.” Azra, behind him, mutters  _ saved.  _ “I was just thinking about things, stuck on here I guess.”

“Well,” Azra says, straightening his shoulders and pushing his nose up just a touch. “I’m inclined to believe that must be for a reason. If you ever decide that maybe you’d like to discuss this further, or talk about anything weighing on you, you know where to find me.” 

Everything happens for a reason. What bollocks. Nothing happens for  _ reasons.  _ Everything just happens. 

“Maybe it was for a reason,” he says, keeping his voice low and taking a half-centimeter step closer to the priest who immediately steps back, feet catching on the edge of his cassock and making him stumble a touch. 

Crowley reaches out and rights him, hands snapping back once he realizes that the movement put him very near stepping over the do-not-step line. 

“Right,” Azra coughs, fixing himself rather nicely before lighting up so thoroughly that Crowley privately rescinds any previous thoughts that he might not have been worth The Effort. “Right! So you  _ do  _ want to come in! Oh that is….” He clearly pauses, searching for the word before exclaiming, half-breathless, “ _ Jolly good!”  _

Jolly good? Dear Satan, what year was it? Wait— wait. He shakes his head as the priest starts back for the church. An annoyed groan shakes its way up his throat, and he crosses the boundary, feet immediately beginning to burn as he reaches out with a short hiss. “Wait, wait, wait I can’t…go in,” he says, stopping the priest with a hand on his shoulder--dear Satan, it hurts. Once the priest stops, he immediately hops back off, the stinging burn of his flesh making his teeth grit. “Any chance we could talk, ah…outside? Here?” he asks. 

The priest looks up, squinting. “Don’t you find it rather warm?” he asks, looking pointedly at Crowley’s jacket. 

Warm? “I run…cold.” Mortals don’t know a thing about heat. All Hell is like someone turned the furnace to max. And set fire to the house. And you. Being a demon sort of meant constantly feeling like someone was holding a lit match to your ribcage. From the inside. “Or…somewhere else? I have a  _ very  _ nice place.” All he feels is the skin of his feet sort of…doing things skin shouldn’t be doing.

Azra gives him this benign sort of smile, head tilted as he reaches out, giving Crowley’s shoulder a soft squeeze. It hits him like a brand, searing through his clothes and burning at his flesh in ways he hasn’t been burned at in a long, long while. 

“When you’re ready, you know where to find me," he says, and Crowley is left there, feeling very confused and very much like he has made some sort of mistake. 


	2. Chapter 2

A little dazed, Crowley heads back to his apartment for the evening, wincing at each step on tender feet. Really was a bad idea. He needs a drink. Or two. 

Or a whole bottle.

He shakes out one foot as he reaches his door, shouldering it open before hopping and shaking out the other. It’ll heal — not well but it’ll heal. His apartment is a cool, modernist, hellscape. Dark concrete walls, sparsely decorated with some original Davinci drafts, some statues liberated from museums, crumbling churches (after the relic has been removed there’s only so much holy energy left. If he’s fast it doesn’t even hurt that much), and the occasional residence of someone who hadn’t otherwise appreciated them. And of course his plants. He pours himself a nice pinot noir and twists his plant mister around in his other hand.

It takes a short bit for the pain to die down enough that Crowley is fairly certain kicking off his shoes won’t take a few layers of skin with it. There’s an uncomfortable whiff of brimstone rolling off it as he inspects the damage. A little raw, a little blistering. It can’t be snapped away but it can be managed. He prods one blister, already starting to recede, wincing a touch. 

The movement does something, stirring up something a bit like dust in the back of his mind. This isn’t the first time he’s done this but…it is. But it’s not. He can smell a putrid mix of brimstone and smoke — thick and heavy with a sort of bitter-cold chill. He recalls feeling…feeling something. Hands on his ankles, making sure he wasn’t too badly injured but—hmm. He shakes his head. 

He’s getting far too old, apparently. Forgetting things like that. Must’ve been some well-meaning human. Maybe he was drunk — probably just drunk. 

Something was still sitting funny in his stomach, this whole charge making his brow furrow and his eyes flicker to the television mounted up on his wall. 

It lights with a wave of his hand, some tacky talk show playing for a bit before the picture fizzes and Hastur is there in all his oozing glory. 

“How goes the temptation, Crowley?” he rasps. 

A shrug of his shoulders, a sip. “Fine. Talked with him today, make it clear I have full intent to talk to him again,” he says, examining his wine with a slightly critical eye. Not great. He twirls the stem in his fingers and, miraculously, it becomes a nice 1924 Chateau Margaux. 

Hastur makes a noise, leaning forward on a screen that strains to contain him. The picture fizzles and pops, the stench of him almost coming through in waves. Crowley distinctly doesn’t breathe in — just in case. Not like he needs to anyway. “That it? Just  _ talked?”  _

“Yep.” He pops his p. “Corruption is an art, Hastur. And Beezlebub says he wants this done as quickly as possible. If I just..." He waves a hand, like he’s tossing out malcontent. “Throw about pretty women and men in the sun and let him watch for a bit, that’ll take years. Decades even. I’ve got a plan that’ll have him by the end of the year.”

“And what plan is that?” Hastur croons, but not like Crowley croons. No, Crowley croons in a low sort of rumble — something more like a low purr, something designed to be charming and alluring. Hastur coons like a sick crow, like a man on the tube you’d much rather not be on the tube with. That sort of croon. The kind that curls and churns in your stomach and raises both your hackles and bile into the back of your throat. 

Crowley’s is just nice. He knows that. He practiced most of the 5th Century. (If he recalls correctly, he practiced with — more accurately  _ at  _ — someone. He doesn’t…he can’t imagine who, he can’t draw up a face in his memories but someone was certainly there. Distinctly not laughing and in fact more than a touch annoyed by it.) 

“It’s a…a plan! And a very good one at that,” Crowley snips back. Obviously his plan is great. Flawless. At least it will be when he really concots it. 

“Don’t,” Hastur warns, “mess this one up, Crowley. Not after what you did last time.” 

Last time? Crowley frowns, he doesn’t recall a last time. As far as he remembers, he’s never actually cocked up anything. Downstairs loves him, really, keeps sending him commendations for things, even for things he hadn’t done but is more than willing to take credit for (Twitter, for one. Unmerciful Satan, the internet was an incredibly evil invention he truly wished had his fingerprints on it). 

When Crowley doesn’t respond immediately, Hastur leans forward more, voice grating harsh on Crowley’s ear. “The boss is keeping a personal eye on this one,” he tells him. 

“Beezlebub is not— “

“ _ Not  _ them.” And Crowley’s stomach lurches, eyes flickering nervous from his glass up to the television screen. “The Boss. Don’t want him upset with you, now do you, Crawly?” 

Very suddenly, Crowley is very much not thirsty at all but really  _ really  _ wishes to be incredibly drunk at the moment. “Right. Well. I best get to work then, shouldn’t I?” he snaps and Hastur is gone and Crowley can shiver as he sinks down, one leg tossed over the arm of his chair. “The boss,” he tells his wine. “Really? What have  _ I  _ done to get checked in with by the Lower Authority _ …”  _  He groans, pushing himself up and snatching up his mister, ready to see if a bit of cleverly weaponized stress and rage might earn him a few more blooms from his  _ Spathiphyllum.  _

In complete defiance of what Crowley’s plan  _ should  _ be, he avoids the church for nearly an entire week. It’s really just by coincidence that he’s in the little cafe a few streets over. Just a few little acts of malice and malintent while he cooked up a good plan. He was still mulling over how to go about formulating a great and incredibly foolproof plan to effortlessly seduce and corrupt a middle-aged priest. Perhaps he could still go back to the original plan. Nothing really lost by the fact that he’d run into the man immediately after thinking it up. 

If anything, it might make more sense. 

More things to talk about with the inevitability that Crowley steals his house key and lets him stay in Crowley’s flat while he waits. He leans forward, staring into the mug of tea he stopped in to get so he could take up the table right by the outlets without charging anything right in the middle of the mid-morning weekend rush. Proper evil. Of course, he’s so far wrapped up in his self-praise, he hardly notices the thick undercurrent of  _ holy  _ undernoting everything else. “Excuse me. Uh, Anthony, is it?” 

Peeling his eyes up from where he’s currently fixated on the little swirl of steam, Crowley squints at Azra. “It’s Crowley,” he says, a touch reflexive. 

“Right, I’ll,” he taps his temple, “remember that. Do you mind if I sit?” He gestures to the chair, empty, in front of him. Crowley glances about, all the other tables and seats are crammed full, a few parties of two or three tossing him glares every once in a while as they stand sipping their drinks. 

Foot on the leg, Crowley pushes the chair out. “Sure, Father,” he says, ignoring the muttered little thanks as he sits with a — Crowely does another discreet sniff with his snake-sharp senses — cocoa. 

Azra frowns. “Please.  _ Azra  _ is fine.” 

“Right. Azra.” Again. It just feels  _ wrong.  _ He rolls the name over on his tongue, tasting every inch of it but he can’t shake where he’s forgetting something. “That right? Not… Ezra or Issah? Azra?” 

“Er,” the priest frowns, carefully patting away at a trace of the drink on his lips. “Yes? Azra is right, it’s…well, I’m not fully certain the meaning of it. I know Azara is  _ helper,  _ which is rather close. And I do like to think of myself as a  _ helper.  _ Help people find the right path, help souls grow and flourish under God’s light.”

That, that Crowley can’t help but scoff at. Across the table, Azra frowns, a look that makes that matchstick-burn in Crowley’s chest feel a little hotter. “I know you said you lost your faith long ago,” Azra says, carefully, looking down into his own mug. Crowley bites both halves of his tongue to avoid saying he was absolutely booted out of it. “But I like to believe that there is not a person out there that cannot be saved. Forgiven.”

Something about that echoes uncomfortably in Crowley’s chest. “I can’t be forgiven,” he says, his tongue and lips forming it like a muscle-memory he wasn’t sure he had. But sure enough there it is, plopped right out in the open. Just a fact. Something unchangingly, unalteringly true. Azra takes interest, leaning forward, arms resting on the table, caging in his mug almost protectively. 

Crowley should mirror it, should express an open and clear interest, but he leans back as some wave of uncomfortable confusion begins to wash over him. There’s a slight throb just behind his left eye — more unnerving given that he is a demon and demons don’t get headaches. 

“Why do you say that?” Azra asks, in the sort of tone that reeks of  _ confess and be absolved.  _

_ Because I can’t,  _ is what he wants to say.  _ Because everything I am is the very core of unforgivable. And even if I hadn’t done a wash of evil in the last six thousand years, if I’d done nothing at all from the moment Heaven split open and sent me plummeting into the very bowels of rotten flesh and hellfire — if I had done nothing but laid by the bubbling pool of sulfur I dragged myself out of She  _ still  _ wouldn’t forgive me.  _

What he does say is this: “Hard to explain. You wouldn’t get it.” And with a brush of his fingers along the rim of the mug, his drink immediately became coffee with quite a bit of brandy. “Why don’t we talk about something else. You for example.”

Takes a long, long, drag off it. Azra sits back, nodding. “I won’t try to save you if you don’t want it,” he says, and Crowley can  _ sense  _ the but coming long before he strikes with it. “But — “ there it is. “You did say, last week, that would be open to discussing your faith further.” 

Did he? Oh right, he was too busy burning to really think that one through. He really did not do that one well, now did he. He should really try to get back into it. Swallowing the queasy feeling in his gut, Crowley leans forward. He looks up at Azra, taking him in for a moment. 

He’s got that sort of friendly, approachable face that Crowely presumes does wonderful things for luring in patrons. Generally unassuming. Generally incredibly innocent. Crowley would bet he doesn’t even dream indecently. 

Though of course, he muses as he tilts his head in contemplation. He could fix that. 

Azra looks away when the insistent press of Crowely’s shaded eyes apparently become too much. 

_ Nah,  _ he decides.  _ Too easy. _

“If you’re not comfortable,” Azra coughs. “We don’t need to—“ 

“It’s fine,” Crowley acquises, folding his arms to lean on them. “I’m perfectly comfortable like this, though I could certainly think of a few ways I could be  _ more  _ comfortable.” It purrs off his tongue, a nice well-practiced sound to replace the sound he often makes by mistake. 

The frown that crosses Azra’s face is very stern. “How? I certainly don’t want you to be uncomfortable, dear boy.” 

His lips split into a ready grin. This is traditionally the point where, in whatever lewd company Crowley would typically be in would pay the tab and be ready to slide out towards the nearest semi-horizontal surface. “We could do somewhere a touch less crowded,” he suggests. “For one. But not in the church. I have a bit of a difficulty with churches — not the most comfortable place for my sort.” What with the searing and blistering his very flesh and all that.

Azra nods as if he understands. “I don’t think people mind too much here, they’re really not paying us much attention, are they?” he asks, craning his neck, looking around. Everyone is wrapped up in themselves, caught up in the worlds of their own creation. There’s groups of friends, first dates, second dates, hundred and fiftieth dates, no one really paying much mind to whatever else is going on around them. 

Crowley could drop right now, turn into a snake and slither out the door and he isn’t sure he’d get a response past a blink. 

He doesn’t of course, if not because if he fails at corrupting this priest not only will it be a devastating wound to his personal pride, he’s fairly certain Hell would be inclined to levy their own devastating wounds against him as well. 

Though, admittedly, it really doesn’t seem the man is getting the point of this, is he? Or perhaps Crowley isn’t getting the point of something. He leans back, finishing his own drink. “Depends, I suppose,” he drawls, “on what we plan on discussing.”

The priest’s brow furrowed, like he’s deep in momentary consideration. He perks back up after a moment, making a sort little  _ oh!  _ of excitement.  “Well,” he says, leaning forward nowm his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “How familiar are you with the story of Noah’s Ark?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The imagined man at the piano begins to play an entirely different song.
> 
> Additionally: Spathiphyllum. Peace Lily.


	3. Chapter 3

The conversation had gone about as poorly as one could imagine. Crowley, ever resistant to changing his positions and dedicated to sticking to his proverbial guns no matter what, refused to budge. 

It took at least another round of drinks — tea, really, for the two of them — and around an hour and a half for them to both reach their respective points. For all Crowley took the priest to be soft and yielding, he was remarkably well-grounded in his beliefs, sticking his nose up and huffing the second Crowley started to lay into the problems with the narrative of the Ark. 

The chief one being the children.

_ “God drowned children! families, sh—there is no mercy for innocents. Exactly the kind of behavior you’d expect from my—from Hell.”  _

_ “But humanity—”  _

_ “As flawed as they might have been there was no reason to drown them, Azra. To kill children. How do you abide by that?”  _

_ To give credit, Azra barely blinked. “I wouldn’t exactly take these stories as — ah — “ _

_ “Gospel?” Crowley asked, brow quirking over the top of his sunglasses. He expected to see a light little dusting of tarnish over the priest's soul right there but nothing happened. A few blinks to look past that human shell and see if he’s damaged by it, by his lack of strictly written belief or if he’d slipped for a moment in his faith in God.  _

_ But nothing! He thought, for a second, there might be a smudge but that was his glasses.  _

_ “It’s important to consider those stories as being,” Azra opens a palm, sweeping it out in front of him, “lessons. Stories intended to impart wisdom and understanding of God’s word.”  _

_ “And what lesson are we to get from Noah’s Ark? Two zebras are more important than human lives?”  _

_ Azra raised the mug to his ridiculously plush, pink lips.  _ (Crowley’s internal musings may have been a touch colored by just how much wine he’d drunk in the discomfort of his own apartment) _. “Personally I read it as more not to get in God’s way when they’re feeling a bit techy.” Okay, that had to cause something right? And not just Crowley’s lip to quirk with a smile that he’s certain he shouldn’t be having but save him if that wasn’t funny.  _

_ And, incredibly accurate.  _

_ He let Azra finish, take a sip and pat his lips and set the mug back down. “Noah walked with God,” Azra mused. “It teaches the importance of loyalty and devotion to the Divine—that the only way to be saved from oblivion is to believe. Have faith and you shall be saved.”  _

_ “So, what,” Crowley asked, a little frustrated by how much he  _ wasn’t  _ corrupting this priest's soul at that very moment. “Zebras walk with God too?”  _

_ “I would assume at least the two.” _

_ Crowley didn’t smile, but  _ Heaven  _ if he didn’t want to.  _

They left with an agreement to meet there again the following week. Crowley offered his number, Azra politely informed him he actually did not have a mobile, but gladly then offered his home number and his e-mail, considering he apparently had a nice computer in his office.

Big thing, Azra described, makes a lot of noises but it’s good for handling any of communication he needs to keep. 

Crowley could barely remove himself from his presence fast enough as Azra carefully transcribed the number and e-mail on a little notebook produced from his pocket. 

_**###** _

The next week, Azra beats him there,  _ and  _ makes sure to nab a seat far from the coveted outlet table. Crowley makes a mental note to try to get here faster, lock it down and notably  _ not charge anything.  _ There’s a cup waiting for him, Azra reading something that he closes once he sees Crowley approach. 

“Good! You came.” He’s just as gleeful and smiling as ever, looking more than a touch self-satisfied if Crowley was going to comment. Which, of course he was — if only just to himself. 

He inclines his head towards the worn-looking book. “Brushing up on your bible?” he asks, taking his seat and lounging back, long legs kicking out from under the table. He really hopes his trips someone. Azra turns the book towards him, leaving Crowley to hum in surprise. “Oscar Wilde. Didn’t think your lot was big into him.”

“Surprisingly, I do have tastes beyond just the priesthood. Though I do wish that bookshop down the road was open. I’m sure you’ve seen it, it’s the one with the old car always out front that I’m always certain  _ must  _ be parked illegally, and someone really ought to do something about it. That’s the sort of place that would have a good copy of Wilde,” Azra says, taking his book back and setting it safely away from the liquids. “I liked him since long before I joined.” 

“When was that?” Crowley asks, probing a little deeper. Part of him wishes it’d’ve been recently. Much easier that way.

Azra hems and haws instead about it, resting his chin on his hand while he thinks it over before finally shaking his head. “I can’t tell you exactly how long but, it hasn’t been too long. I used to…” He blinks, pausing, and Crowely feels a sudden, strange sense fill him. Azra shakes his head after a few moments. “Sorry. I didn’t do anything before this, I don’t know why…” Another head shake. “Apologies, dear boy, where were we?” 

“I was just asking invasive questions about your personal life.” 

“Ah. Right. No, it feels like I’ve always been a priest. I think because…oh, this sounds silly.” 

Crowley gestures for him to continue, leaning back and watching Azie do the same and continues on. “For as long as I can remember I used to get these,” he hovers his hand around his head, “blinding white headaches. Just immediately onset with no warning and nobody knew what caused them. They…happened more often when we went to church and I tended to get them  _ during  _ the services. Particularly the bad ones.” 

Don’t say you’re a prophet, please  _ Satan,  _ don’t let him be a prophet. “I still get them. When I read the bible? Headaches. When I think too hard about biblical events—headaches.”

Or a nephilim. Or, well if he was a cambion Crowley wouldn’t be here—those are all fucked. Better be a regular old-fashioned human. 

Crowley waits before asking the obvious question. “Why do it then, if it,” he pauses to swirl a hand around his head, “y’know.” 

“Because it feels right. It feels like a sign; it’s painful and occasionally rather debilitating but—I chose to take it as a sign.” Or a brain tumor. Crowley sniffs as discreetly as he can. Or not. Smells perfectly healthy. And a little bit like nutmeg. But he’s not going to take that as a sign of anything but the fact that clearly it’s an undertone to his cologne.  “I feel at my most comfortable in churches as well, something about them sort of...reminds me of home. I mean, I get quite the same sensation when I’m standing in an old bookshop. That distant, blissful kind of ache that makes you miss all the trials of childhood but fills you with a sense of  _ love  _ so true you can practically smell it.”

Nothing about that Crowley relates to—not that he can’t, mind you just that he doesn’t. Love. Not for demons, really. Not even a little bit. 

He changes the subject as quick as he can. 

“Well, what do your parents think about your choice?” he asks, pushing the conversation still. “Must be disappointed. No grandkids and all.”

“Oh, my…” Another pausing blink, Azra pressing a few fingers to his temple before he shakes it off. “My mother was very supportive. She was a sweet but stern woman. Beyond loving, and her capacity for forgiveness was unimaginable. Incredibly supportive. The only…yes, I have no recollection of my father.” His gaze shifts side to side, as if searching his memories for something that he’s very confused to have lost. 

Pitiful, really, the human memory. “I once lost something very,  _ very  _ important that she’d given me. Thought I’d be in terrible trouble but she just never mentioned it again, she loved us so deeply. So honestly. Being around her felt as though I was…basking in the light of God.” His smile turns a little sad as he looks down at his mug. If Crowley twirls a finger to make it warm enough to feel as Azra cups either side, that’s between himself and himself. “Maybe that’s why I joined the Church. Closest I’ve felt to her in a long time.” 

There’s a beat before Azra looks up, forcing a cheerier smile back onto his lips. “Ah, sorry, babbling on about myself. What about you, Crowley, were your parents active in the church?”

“Eh,” Crowley hesitates. By all real stretch of the word, he doesn’t have parents. He  _ was  _ created by someone—something—but he wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe it. “I was…. Well. I—er.” He coughs. What is he supposed to say, God created him then She cast him out?  _ Oh, well, my mother—if you would even call Her that I suppose—decided I asked far too many questions and dunked me into a vat of boiling sulfur. She was made entirely out of love and every moment I live without it is like someone is holding my ribs apart and pouring in molten steel?  _

Azra seems to get the message and politely changes the topic. Crowley forgets, entirely, to discuss the bible. Instead, they talk about nothing—absolutely nothing—for far too long. Azra excuses himself, making Crowley promise to come back again the next week. “Next time, we’ll really get into the stories and lessons,” he vowed. 

Crowley had tilted his head back up at him. “Swear to God?” It won him a smile, which he considers to be quite the victory point for him, but a passing glance proved nothing but the fact that the priest’s soul was far more resilient than anticipated. 

Generally speaking, Crowley considers himself a very talented temptor—after all he  _ did  _ sort of start the whole thing. He’s good at reading people, good at reading their intent and their interest. A flick of the eyes, mirroring his movements, a subtle shift closer—all of that sort of stuff. He’s turned it into a bit of a mastering, something he could readily do far more evil with if he wanted. But a  _ real  _ evil world is just the sort that’s far too boring to be spending all his time in. 

Succeed too much too fast and you’re out of a job. And he rather likes his job, thank you very much.

He meanders back home after the conversation, more than a touch annoyed with himself for making what felt an  _ awful  _ lot like no progress. There’s a couple glasses of wine, some tending to his plants, some adjustments to be made here and there to his few belongings. 

He’s more than a few glasses deep when he finds the second material jacket he owns (he can, of course, make it appear as though he’s wearing an infinite amount of jackets. Each one more different and interesting than the last). “What are you still doing here?” he asks, pushing out a low breath. 

He pours himself down on the couch (brutalistic by design, comfortable by demonic intervention) the jacket still in his hands. “Thought I threw you out ages ago,” he mumbles. It’s a ridiculous thing, really. First of all, it doesn’t fit him (he would know, he tried it on at least fifteen times since he saw it). 

Ugly, too. Nothing Crowley would ever wear, even if he had it tailored to fit (or more likely, snapped his fingers to make it fit).

All worn fabric, like it had been used hundreds of thousands of times, rubbed at the edges and the sleeves. The buttons had been carefully replaced but it’s clear it’s not the original. It’s not stained now but he gets the sharpest impression it once was. He brushes his fingers carefully down a spot on the back. There’s a spot too clean, too right. Like something happened the jacket would much rather forget and pretend never happened. 

If he presses his nose to it and inhales, a deep sort of breath that ends up filling him down to the pit of the void in his chest. It smells like the ghost of Heaven, the chrome-and-ozone tinge of holy power and the weather-whipped sands and rocksalt outside of the Gates and the sweet fruits and fresh-to-the-world flowers of Eden.

And nutmeg. Just a hint of nutmeg. 

And, if he presses the balled up fabric harder against his face, driven by some unseen urge to get it closer against his skin, he catches just the faintest whisper of his cologne. 

Unmerciful Satan, he has no idea where this thing came from. Really rather rude of him, if you think about it, to forget someone undressing in his flat. Or at least leaving their jacket behind. 

Crowley lays it out over his lap, plucking back up the wine glass he deposited on the side table and looking down at the offending piece of material. The more he thinks, the less he can remember. Thinking too hard about it brings back that stinging ache just behind his eye and he strokes part of the sleeve idly between his thumb and index fingers. 

It has to have been a human who owned it. But that certainly doesn’t explain the Heaven-smell. He tilts his head back, closing his eyes and lingering in the thought of it for a few moments. 

Had he taken someone particularly holy back to his flat before? Done filthy things to turn a soul wrong side out and wring God from them? Surely he’d remember that.  

This is the kind of question that cannot be answered tonight. Crowley debates tossing the offending jacket once and for all, holding it up for a few moments before gently folding it and setting up on a shelf in an incredibly unused closet. A trophy, obviously.

For whatever it was he did. Something squirms like worms in the pit of his stomach and he takes to his bedroom for some well-timed languishing. 

Crowley’s bedroom was one of the few rooms—aside from the sitting room—that regularly gets used. Though not in the way you’re thinking. Crowley rarely has people back to his, he just prefers the hedonistic pleasure of silk sheets on his skin (and occasionally scales) and being able to sprawl and drink and occasionally take a long nap. 

As sparsely decorated as the rest of the flat, Crowley has a few well-placed statues and a painting or two clinging to his walls but the rest of the room is rather bare. He does have a rather large bed right in the center of the farthest wall, wrapped in rich red silks and black blankets. He sets his glass down on the nightstand (which, of course, has only ever held wine in its long, long, boring life as Crowley’s nightstand) and sinks right into the soft mattress, sighing as he stares back up at the ceiling. 

One would think, with the wide expanse of the bed, and the fact that more often than not—despite popular assumptions— Crowley sleeps alone, that he would sprawl in the middle of the bed. His long limbs would stretch and sweep from corner to corner, commandeering every inch of the luxurious space for himself. He would tangle his legs in the sheets and properly pour himself to achieve maximum comfort. 

He doesn’t. 

Crowely lies on his back on the left side of the bed, fingers idly groping along the other half in search of the pillow that normally perches there. He rolls onto his side when he finds it, drawing it to his chest and closes his eyes, searching, fruitlessly for the smell of nutmeg. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So honestly? I absolutely LOVE seeing everyone's theories -- I love them so much.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear fucking God - I'm so sorry everyone. I had two chapters queued up on AO3 as drafts and It appeared they went and god themselves mixed up. What a few people saw this morning was the fifth chapter (which was then put up immediately after this, out of fairness for everyone involved)
> 
> But this is the right order.

St. James Park is one of the most versatile parks in England. You could use it for any sort of clandestine meeting or covert affair, really. Governmental, military, personal—at any given point on any given day, there are plenty of people about meeting on any one of those topics. 

More often than not, one particular occult form can be spotted meandering along, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He could be spotted plucking his way through for the past…well, as long as there had been a St. James Park, really. And long, long before that in many, many other places. 

Crowley remembered burrowing up from the ground, the first taste of holy air, of Eden, on his tongue. It burst through his blood like hellfire, sending every nerve alight with a violent clash of emotions. Somewhere between  _ loathing  _ and  _ home.  _ (Home, in this sense, being a sensation that can only be described as another form loathing, but for himself). He doesn’t remember why he stopped being a snake, sliding along his belly and coiling over warm rocks and hanging from tree branches. 

He remembers Eve and Adam. Remembers the apple, the lessons, the Original Sin. 

Then, in one moment, he’s back in this shape—two legs and two arms and hands and fingers and toes. He walked around, he tempted, he watched, he corrupted. Got monotonous after a while, boring. Humans started doing the heavy lifting, no longer was it him out there, luring humans to their grand folly—but themselves. He watched them take things out on one another, treat each other terribly. 

He watched them treat each other wonderfully. It’s funny—he remembers both, at the same moment, being alone and not being alone. He remembers the aching presence of another being beside him, someone familiar, but missing. No amount of strained thinking or fumbling for names could put a face to the feeling, the ache. Like someone was torn from him. 

It’s been aching for as long as he can remember. 

It ached as he watched Rome crumble, empires rise and wash to the sea, whole species be birthed and die. 

It would be poetic, he thinks, as he stops to let a squirrel dart past him, if it weren’t so incredibly boring on both a grand scale and a daily one. When he wasn’t about harbinging malice and spreading the seeds of low-grade evil, his quotidian routine was lifeless. Drab. Tend to the plants, drink, wander, sit by the duck pond in St. James’s Park, drink, monitor some spread of evil, pop over to the nursery by Regents Park to see if anything sparks his interest, buy a new plant, drink, go home. Rinse, repeat. 

He deviates every once in a while, finding himself in some pub or thumbing the stem of a wine glass at the Ritz, staring at the empty chair across from himself and trying not to let his mind wander too far away from himself.

At some point in the 18th-century, Crowley took to sitting in St. James’s Park, ignoring the nagging growl in the deep winged void inside himself that wondered if someone would come sit beside him. They never did, of course. He’d visited on occasion the century before to watch the animals stare, tired and displeased, out at the spectators. Been a long time since he’d seen a camel. First time since Noah, he thought. 

Over the years, he sat there, watching the canal be filled, Rosamond’s Pond disappearing, fashionable shrubberies popping up where there once were flower beds. The slow shifting towards what he’s sitting in now, on a bench, idly watching a duck be fed by someone conducting some sort of covert business. 

Crowley stretches his legs out in front of himself, crossing his arms over his chest and letting his gaze wash over those jogging or walking or feeding ducks. He’s not here to work. He’s here to think. 

He clears his throat and someone playing their music just a touch too loud trips over their own feet, landing hand-holding-phone-first into fresh bird shit.

He might be working a bit. Working helps him think. 

Crowley sniffs, directing his attention elsewhere. Tomorrow would be his fifth week meeting with Azra; they’d gotten into a few heavy conversations on everything from the story of Jesus to their respective positions on Manchester, from Cain and Abel to what constitutes  _ Good Music,  _ and the story of the good Samaritan and how the story of the three talents was abused to allow for profiteering off of colonization, and colonization and the British and the world and the Spanish in South America. 

Honestly, Crowley’s tried it all. Azra doesn’t budge. He smiles, he states his thoughts—often as though they were indisputable fact—and his soul glimmers and gleams so brightly beneath his surfance that Crowley is frequently glad he’s got his sunglasses on. Nothing Crowley tries makes him mad enough, or leads him to question God’s Plan. 

Almost infuriating. Well, not almost, it  _ is  _ infuriating. He’s infuriated. Absolutely incensed. A few meters away, a bush smolders with the power of his annoyance. 

But it doesn’t last that long. 

Priest has to break sometime. He’s not immune to corruption and Crowley hasn’t—well, he hasn’t lost his  _ touch.  _ Even if the priest doesn’t particularly react to Crowley’s touch. 

Physical touch, that is. He’s tried a few times, dragging his own bony fingers over Azra’s as he passes him something, hand on his shoulder, feet bumping his under the table (under the guise of an accident, of course. And sometimes it is. Crowely struggles every once in awhile with all these limbs). 

He’s tried to forge connection, something that doesn’t exactly come  _ natural  _ to himself. But that rarely gives fruit to anything. Crowley can catch the thinnest scent of  _ want  _ off the priest—but it doesn’t even touch on the shimmer of his soul. 

Sitting on the bench, he muses on this for a few moments before growling at a bird hopping expectantly at him. “I haven’t got any bread,” he huffs, waving a foot at the thing—but it refuses to budge, instead chirping at him. “Get on,” he tries, waving harder, but a shadow falls over both bird and foot, Crowley picks up a now-very-familiar scent. 

Holy, some pungent incense, and nutmeg. 

“He’s just hungry,” Azra says, and a little scattering of bread scraps falls around the bird. Like manna from Heaven. 

And like most humans when confronted with the idea of holy energy and powers—the little bird takes off, landing a few meters away to watch with a proper amount of trepidation. 

“Hello, Crowley,” Azra greets, as chipper as ever. Crowley glances up, jerking his head in approval once Azra gestures to ask if he could sit beside him. He’s not wearing his cassock today—though this is far from the first time Crowley’s seen him without it. If he didn’t have something that required him to wear his more formal clothes he usually came in some dark vintage clothes. Well, some vintage jacket and dark colored waistcoat beneath it. All dark greys—it’s really a whole mess, the entire ensemble. Looked terrible on him. 

No respect for fashion. But Crowley isn’t sure he can ever expect much more from a priest. But he still lets him sit beside him. It feels oddly right, a little less lonely. 

That is, if demons could even feel lonely. Crowely would argue they can’t. Not at all. He’s never felt lonely once in his life. Not even a little bit. He steals a glance over where Azra sighs as he sits, tilting his face up to the sun and resting his hands on his knees. 

Not even a little bit lonely. 

“Nice day, isn’t it,” Azra asks after a short while. “Didn’t really think you were the sort to come out here on a nice day.” 

It was actually one of the last few nice days of the season, Crowley could smell it. The sort where the wind rolled in just enough to fight off the heat of the sun and the nights cooled enough that the humans weren’t feeling too damp and sticky. The start of a slow, meandering, decline into winter. 

“I like nice days,” he says, turning his nose toward Azra, eyes searching from behind his sunglasses. “What makes you think I don’t like nice days?”

“You don’t look the sort,” Azra says, as plain as can be, with that thin veneer of judgement spread over the whole of it. Crowley looks down at himself, frowning before looking back up. 

“What?” Is it the trousers? Maybe the belt? He rarely does see humans wearing leather anymore. 

Azra steals a glance, looking very suddenly very nervous as he fidgets with his fingers. “Nothing.”

“No, really.” His lips curl up into a smile since he really can’t be offended that long. “Is it the jacket? The trousers? The hair?” He can’t manage any venom for the questions, part of him just perfectly warmed over at the idea of making the priest just a little uncomfortably awkward.

There’s some indecisive spluttering and stuttering beside him before Azra admits. “Just the entire thing, Crawl— _ Crowley.”  _

The warmth saps out, replaced by something very,  _ very  _ cold. “What did you call me?” 

This is bad. He freezes, as if the implications can’t see him if he’s still enough. 

“Crowley,” Azra says, nose scrunching, “I called you _Crowley_ , which is your name. Well, _Anthony_ is your name but that’s a bit….” 

This is very bad. 

“No, you didn’t. You said—“ 

“I said Crowley,  _ Crowley,  _ and really that’s all I have to say about that. Crowley, it’s your name and it’s what I said,” he snaps before clicking his mouth shut, hands flexing and unflexing visibly on his knees.

Crowley pulls back, a little, well, taken aback. He clears his throat and sniffs once. “Right. Well.” There’s a beat. He must’ve misheard. He  _ had  _ to have misheard. “So it’s the whole thing, then, is it?” 

Azra won’t look at him. Not even a glance. Then, after a moment, a brief flick of blue eyes at him. “Yes. If you must know. The…clothes and the hair and the,” he gestures to his temple own temple, “tattoo. You look like you only go out at night.”

“‘M not a  _ vampire _ , _ ”  _ Crowley scoffs. Just a demon. “Besides, you’ve only seen me at daytime, so obviously I go out.”

“I only see you indoors, wearing sunglasses,” Azra points out, as if that means anything. Though, of course, pointing it out does cause Crowley to (a touch self-consciously) adjust his glasses. 

Azra never mentioned them before. Too polite to say anything. “Eye condition,” Crowley lies—but only a little bit. His eyes are in a condition, that condition being  _ snake  _ and being rather permanent. “Never take ‘em off.” 

It makes Azra grimace, a little waft of guilt rolling off him. “Apologies for prying, dear boy.” 

“It’s no problem, really.” He shakes out a tense shoulder still. “I like sitting here. Really. I come out here once, twice a week, walk down the paths, sit, watch people. I’ve done it for a really long while.” Doing it since it was mostly cows. 

He liked the cows. He misses the cows. 

For a moment he wonders,  _ what are they up to,  _ before immediately remembering they’re all very, very long-dead. He frowns down at his hands, a motion that Azra clearly picks up on, inching ever closer. “We could meet here next week,” he says, softly. “Instead of at the shop. I don’t have anything scheduled so it wouldn’t be too disastrous. Though I am very fond of the drinks they have there, and their pastries.” 

Clearly thinking about those pastries now, Azra chews on his lip for a moment. Crowley raises a brow at him. “It’s what? Twenty minutes from here? We can walk. Meet there. Easier than trying to find each other here then trying to find a spot to sit, I suppose.” Or…for a moment, Crowley glances over the horizon, where a familiar table opens with just a thought. He didn’t  _ mean  _ to open the table, of course. Just…happens sometimes. 

“We could get lunch,” he suggests. “Make a whole day of it, of you trying to  _ save  _ me.” 

“That sounds lovely,” Azra says, his facing giving some…strange mixture of pain and happiness. It only lasts a moment or two before the pain overflows, and he’s left rubbing his brow. “I really do apologize, I believe I’m getting another of my headaches,” he says. 

They’ve been more frequent, or so he told Crowley a week or so ago. He doesn’t like to think they have anything to do with himself. “Should you…be getting home then?” he asks, a touch softly. 

 

Azra shakes his head. “I’m fine, dear boy,” he says, and Crowely, well—far be it from him to prevent and alleviate the suffering of humans. He’s not supposed to, in fact he’s supposed to be on the other end of that sort of thing. But…whenever Azra gets one of those splitting headaches in his presence, Crowley can’t help himself. He rubs a palm down his leg and snaps and Azra shakes his head. 

“See,” he says, grinning. “I swear, they never go away so quickly when I’m alone. I could be laid up for hours—you must be some sort of miracle worker.” It’s joking, a light little barb, but Crowley still wishes he’d said it a little softer. 

“I’ll walk with you back to the church, if you’d like,” Crowley says, voice still clinging to that edge of softness (he refuses to even consider it might be tender. Nothing about him is  _ tender).  _ “If you wanted to start heading back?” 

“That’d be nice,” Azra says, smiling. “We haven’t discussed a story yet today—I know we’re a day early but we could always bump it up to now.”

“We don’t always have to,” Crowley says, standing up and offering a hand for Azra to leverage himself up. The touch is soft, sweet, and burning all at once. But after a few idle touches, skin-to-skin contact, what really starts to sting is when Azra lets go, leaving just the cool pinpricks of what once was something very hot now being very,  _ very  _ cold. 

Azra rights his outfit and starts walking, Crowley keeping pace easily. “Nonsense, we didn’t last week. How else would you repeatedly assert that I’m trying to save your soul if I let us slip.”

Crowley almost trips over his feet as one pauses and the other fails to catch up fast enough to do so. It’s very nearly a stumble but he catches himself just in time to prevent it. “You’re not trying to save me?” he asks, watching the priest's retreating back before Azra catches up and stops, turning around. 

“I told you once, Crowley, I have no intention of  _ saving  _ you if you don’t want to be. I don’t…go home at night and pray for you, I don’t ask God to tell me how to best crack your surface and tell you what you need to hear.”

“Then why,” Crowley gestures around him, at everything, at  _ everything.  _ “Why all this? Why keep meeting with me and getting annoyed and frustrated and putting up with this? What’s in it for you?” 

The smile tugs at those warm eyes once again. “I enjoy talking to you. I enjoy spending time with you. We’re friends, Crowley. Come on, now,” he says, turning his face up to the sky. In the distance, threatening clouds start to loom. “Might rain.”

Friends. 

_ We’re friends.  _

His feet are numb, prickly, when he moves them. Like he’d been sitting on them wrong all decade.  _ Friends.  _ He swallows, thick and heavy, and catches up to the priest, keeping pace with him effortlessly. 

“Have you heard of Daniel and the Lion?” Azra asks, as they walk. “Workers wanted Daniel gone so they told King Darius that everyone wants to worship him as God, knowing that Daniel would disobey and be fired. Did just that, but Darius threw him in a pit to set lions on him. Gates opened, lions refused to eat him.” 

Crowley remembers. Not the story so much as Daniel and Darius. Daniel was a good kid, the sort that annoyed Crowley but not so much the way that he really minded. He was just good—too good, annoyingly good. Hell, the idea about the worshipping was sort of Crowley’s idea. Put a good damper on plenty of men’s chances at the pearly gates. 

He can’t remember why the lions didn’t eat him, really. He tries but he gets a bit of that throb again, something blocking him up. Someone stopped them and he knows, he  _ knows,  _ it wasn’t God. She doesn’t involve herself like that, She never has. She made a plan and the humans follow it without ever realizing it. 

Someone stopped the lions and Crowley was there and…. Funny. If he thinks hard enough, he  _ swears  _ it just might have been him. 

Couldn’t be, though. That would cancel everything out, now wouldn’t it? “Maybe the lions weren’t hungry,” he tries. Azra rolls his eyes, but he smiles, just a touch. 

“Walk with me back to the church?” Azra asks, and Crowley hums, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Whatever you say, angel.” 

Crowley doesn’t notice, but walking beside him, Azra smiles — just the faintest twitch of lips. 

_**###** _

As much as Crowley detests the crowded, putrid nature of Hell—occasionally there’s little he can do to avoid visiting. Beelzebub or Dagon need an official report, or he needs something, or he wants to present some sort of new form of torture or horrors that he’s discovered from the humans again. 

He’d dropped Azra off outside the church, balancing just off the line of demarcation, promising to find him again the following week, Azra telling him he’ll send an e-mail with a reminder, as if Crowley at all plans on reading it. 

(He does, he even responds. That won’t go in the report.)

He takes the Official Entrance, glances around at the demons giving him shifty eyes and wide berths. They’d started that a year or so ago. Not sure why. 

Crowley gives one a wave, Bune, he thinks. He gets a rabid sort of snarl in return, and not the kind that’s nice for demons to get from other demons. He gets the same treatment from Forneus, Baphomet, and Ipos. (Well Ipos growls at him, something long and horrid-smelling but what, Crowley doesn’t actually know for certain.)

Frowning, he picks his way easily through the normally claustrophobic halls of Hell until he reaches Beelzebub. They’re flanked on either side by Hastur and Dagon, other demons mingling about. Crowley can make out Malphas and Onoskelis, but the rest he doesn’t recognize. 

“Good of you to join us,” Beelzebub hisses. Crowley waves. “How goes the  _ priest?”  _

“Fine,” he lies. “Really. Give it…few more months he’ll be out,” Crowley gestures, “doing…evil things. Preaching the good of adultery and drinking and whatnot."

“We want better things from him, Crowely,” Hastur tells him. “Worse. We want…you  _ know.”  _

Crowley makes a few noises before settling on asking, “What is this all about, anyway? Not that…. I’m doing my job, doing the whole corrupting and tempting business but it seems like a lot of effort for one priest.”

Beelzebub leans forward, fly on their head twisting its wings. “Do as you’re told, Crowely.” 

Funny thing that, telling a demon to do as he’s told. The whole point of  _ being  _ demons was that they didn’t. Crowley takes a half-step back, looking around at faces that he swears weren’t so malicious just a couple years ago. “I am. I will.”

“We don’t want another mistake from you. This is  _ incredibly  _ important. To us and to Lucifer himself.”

Another? It has to be what Hastur mentioned before but Crowley can’t think of a single thing he’s done to raise Hell's suspicions or to put him in Hell’s bad books (not that Hell has any other kind). “What is this? Beelzebub, Dagon? Is there something I should know? He’s not nephilim, I’d know if he was a nephilim. Is he some kind of prophet?”

“What he is, is of no concern of yours anymore, Crawly.”  _ Anymore?  _

Dismissed and properly chastised, Crowley returns back to his flat, stalking up and down the halls. He uses that bundled up energy to torment his plants, dropping one into the woodchipper for having a leaf spot. It doesn’t last long, leaving him pouring himself back into his best chair with a glass of his most acceptable wine, and thinks back on his day. 

_ Whatever you say, angel.  _

It sort of slipped out. But it didn’t feel wrong. It felt right. Good. 

Angel. His lips form the shape of the word as Azra fills his mind. Angel. 

For a moment, it feels like something inside himself is tugging at all his edges, at all his seams, dying to get out. It pushes at him, at the inside of his chest and tries to wrench free of some invisible cage. Angel. He hums and finishes the glass, pushing himself up to find his way to some pub to drink himself into oblivion. 

Probably doesn’t mean a damned thing. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm so sorry about the confusion and the mix-up. It won't ever happen again!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that accidentally went up first this morning which means TWO chapters today because I'm an idiot :)

Here’s the thing about angels. Angels are ethereal beings comprised of, amongst other things, large quantities of Love. Love from within, Love from without. At their very core there are quite big into the whole “love” thing. 

Having come from the same stock, demons are very much every bit the same angels. Just without all the Love. 

It’s not that they’re incapable of producing or accepting Love in both large and small quantities, it’s just that they know what losing Love feels like, they know how deeply it hurts and are so inclined to not do that again. 

Of course, if you ask a demon about their capacity for love, they won’t tell you that. They’ll tell you that they are incapable, on a fundamental, occult, level, of Love. If you point out that they were once angels, and that angels are comprised of Love, the demon will hiss. And if you’re very lucky to make it through the encounter alive, the demon will tell you that  _ that  _ was a very, very, very long time ago and things have changed since then. Those are lies. 

Crowley, being that he is a demon, is aware that those are lies but is also the sort of demon who would tell you that he is incapable of Love. Not for any malicious intent, but really for the sake that he doesn’t want to talk about it and he doesn’t want to think about it. 

This is made much more difficult due to the fact that he can’t stop thinking about Azra. He tries, he tries putting him out of mind, tries thinking about other things, tries drinking. All it does is remind him that he’s pointedly trying not to think about how Azra smiles with his eyes whenever Crowley says something both funny and incredibly blasphemous. The way he tuts and looks up to the Heavens before he agrees with him, the way his lips tug gently at the edge of a smile, the way his eyes light up whenever he sees Crowley in much the same way they light up whenever he seems a particularly scrumptious looking treat. 

Or when he sees someone doing an act of un-requested and unnecessary good.

It’s absurd, he lies to himself, demon’s can’t love things. Demon’s especially can’t love humans. 

Which means there must be a completely different reason why, in the week between leaving Azra at the church, he hasn’t been able to get the priest off his damned mind. He just kept cropping up every few minutes. As Crowley was working—supposed to convince someone to steal from an antique shop when he saw some dusty old book and immediately thought  _ oh, Azra would love that.  _

When he saw some girl drop an ice cream and the man offer her a second free-of-charge.  _ Azra would love that.  _

When it was warm.  _ Wonder what Azra’s doing.  _ When it started to rain.  _ Hope Azra got back to his flat all right.  _

Incredibly inconvenient it was. Even as he’s walking to meet him, Crowley’s thinking about him. He’s thinking about him so much he gets much too wrapped up in his thoughts about the priest he nearly walks past the turn to meet him. Twice. 

It’s not just Azra on his mind, it’s Azra and Hell and just what Hell wants him to  _ do.  _ They were laying it on a bit thick, if Crowley was going to be entirely honest. Really. Azra hasn’t done a thing that would suggest he was on the path to sainthood, or some sort of secret angel, or some kind of holiest-man-ever— Oh. Has he got the wrong priest? Nonsense, someone would’ve said something if he had the wrong priest. Absolutely, someone would’ve said something if he had the wrong priest. Can’t be the wrong priest. Has to be the right one. 

No other priest it could be. 

Azra has to be the right one. Even if he just seems like an awfully normal, not-at-all-special, barely interesting if not incredibly resistant to all forms of corruption priest. Very run-of-the-mill. 

Very average.  

Whoever Crowley is kidding—it isn’t himself. There’s something about Azra, there’s always been something about Azra. Something else, something slightly different that Crowley could never put his finger on. The way he listens and talks and moves his hands and the way he gets so caught up in the books he’s reading when Crowley goes to meet him that he can stand there for hours probably and watch him. Arresting. 

Maybe he’s a siren. No, that’s stupid, why would Hell care about a siren, they have all the sirens.

Why would they care so much about a priest? Just a regular old priest with nice eyes and a habit of reading Wilde and Whitman. His priest can’t be an angel, he  _ can’t  _ be an angel. Firstly, he can’t be an angel because Crowley would know if he were an angel. Secondly, he can’t be an angel because…well…because he can’t be! 

Crowley can’t have lunch with an angel. It reflects very poorly on him if he does (poorly in the sense that the other demons wouldn’t like it. Not poorly in the sense that other demons would love it).

He puts himself back to sorts and walks between the bookshop and the old, abandoned car, not giving either of them more than a passing glance. 

Apparently he’s jumpy, twitchy, when he picks up Azra—at least enough for the priest to notice, one brow cocked at him and eyes shifting up and down Crowley’s lanky body. 

“What?” he asks, hands out as he approaches the consecrated edge of the churchyard. 

“Nothing,” Azra says. “You just look…on edge.” 

“Not on edge,” Crowley says. “C’mon, we can…walk. Walk and talk. Like that American show. What’s the story on your mind today, angel?” Angel? Really? After what he  _ just  _ spent so much time thinking about? He sticks out his tongue, making a face. 

Azra only gives him that sweet, soft, patient smile back. “That’s the second time now.” 

“Second time what?” 

“That you’ve called me angel. I appreciate the sentiment, but I am far from an angel, my dear.” 

Crowley frowns, shoulders ducking low as if he can keep himself from the predatory gaze of the open skies above him. It’s cloudy—overcast and dim with a distant scent of rain on the wind—Crowley isn’t certain if that makes it better or worse. “No I haven’t,” he says, frowning. 

“You have,” Azra argues back, in that sort of  _ that’s the end of that  _ tone. “I’m not offended, I find it…nice.” he says, with a bit of a smile. 

Nice. Crowley isn’t…whatever. He doesn’t have the energy to be upset. At least not about that. “I’ll just have to keep doing it then,” he mumbles, half-under his breath. Azra looks at him, as if he’d heard it, but doesn’t say anything at all. 

They walk a few minutes in a comfortable silence before Azra asks him, “Is there any biblical passage or story on your mind today, Crowley?” 

“Isn’t that your job?” he replies, keeping pace with the priest. 

“Thought I’d offer the chance to answer questions of yours. I’ve been waiting for us to reach the, well, I don’t want to say the more  _ obvious  _ questions or-or problems you may have.” He stumbles a bit over his words and Crowley glances towards him, trying to figure out what those obvious questions might be. 

They’ve talked over a lot of the bible, more than Crowley even remembers there being. “What might those be?” he asks, after wracking his mind and coming up with nothing. 

“You know, the big ones. Leviticus. Gomorrah.” 

Crowley frowns. Gomorrah was a nice place. He really did like visiting there. As for Leviticus, that stumps him for a moment. “The shellfish bit?” he asks, lips pitching down into a frown.

“No… no, dear. We don’t have to discuss it if…” Oh.  _ Oh.  _ Right, that part. 

Crowley always forgets why he stopped visiting Gomorrah. And Sodom. Gone, turned to salt and dust, really. There’s a whole tangent Crowley could go on about occult beings being inherently sexless—which we’ve already covered—and not really having solidified sexualities like humans do, but he isn’t sure what that would accomplish with the priest. It’s difficult to explain to someone that they are both incredibly right and incredibly wrong in the same moment.

Right, that Crowley rarely discriminates in his partners but wrong in the sense that Crowley is anything different that just Crowley. Unbound by mortal constraints that honestly made very little sense to him once they cropped up in the 19th-Century. Really he was fine just doing what he wanted to. Whomever he wanted to. 

So instead, he just sucks his teeth for a moment before saying, “We can talk about it. I’m an open book, angel.” 

“I was expecting an explosion of vitriol regarding homophobia in the church,” Azra admits. “You certainly had strong opinions on the nature of  _ goodness  _ and what constitutes a proper crepe a few weeks ago. Thought this might be one of those topics that gets you excitable.” 

“Well, as it stands, Azra, I don’t really care much what humans think about what I do in the comfort of other people’s beds.” 

There’s a trickle of uncomfortable laughter beside him. “Humans,” Azra chuckles as if it’s just a good joke and not a horrible slip on Crowley’s part, as they wait for a break in the traffic for a moment to cross. As the traffic breaks, so does the laughter. “Really, Crowley, I understand your trepidation with joining the church under such...circumstances. I mean, I am doing a fair amount of  _ assuming  _ here,” he says, “though given that you’ve not corrected me, I’m willing to just accept it as fact.” 

Crowley hums. He’s been with all sorts of humans over the ages—mainly because he would get bored and curious and…well, mostly curious. He wasn’t so keen on the connection humans made between sex and evil. It was nice, felt nice, so he did it. Quite a few times. 

Still does it, too. When he’s not busy doing other things. Azra looks distinctly uncomfortable, twisting one finger with his other hand. Crowley should push it, should lean into it, but he doesn’t. He just sort of hovers around the edge of the question, giving a resounding shrug with both a dip if his shoulder and a tug of his lips.

“Right, then,” Azra says, having gotten the message that, while Crowley  _ claims  _ his sex life is an open book, what he really means is that it’s a little too complicated to get into and maybe they won’t discuss it. “I have…well. I think it’s right you know,” Azra stops and starts, as halting as ever. “Back when I was…younger.” 

Oh, well. Now this is interesting. Definitely can’t be a saint like that, or an angel. See. Makes perfect sense.

He’s been quiet for too long, hasn’t he. A glance over to where Azra is nervously fidgeting tells him as much. Crowley mulls over what to say next before just giving up, saying it’s already been an incredibly strange day and he’s had quite enough of it. “You dabbled, then?” he asks. “Not surprised, really.” 

Okay, maybe a touch surprised. “Besides, doesn’t it fit in with your whole 'give and receive love' deal? Love thy neighbor, doesn’t get too specific about how you ought to be loving him. Always thought it was a little strange how your lot was the one apparently  _ against  _ the pleasures of the flesh. Connection on an intimate, human, level—praising God with every movement. Strikes me as just the sort of thing to be in the manual.” 

“Right,” Azra says, not fighting. He is flushed though, a sort of pink spread under his collar and spreading up to the tips of his ears. Crowley follows the line with his eyes, sniffing and looking away once he realizes he’s been staring for much too long now. 

“Do you want to,” Crowley gestures ahead of them. They’d made it to the park, to a bench near the pond where Crowley is rather fond of sitting and watching. “We’ve got some time before we have to head over.” 

Normally, when approaching these conversations, Crowley has a goal in mind. That goal, usually being to upset the rigorous belief systems ingrained in the priest's mind and replace them with just the sort of nagging questions that keep him up at night. Right now, he has nothing but a genuine, idle curiosity. 

Not a blemish on the priest's soul. Not a  _ premarital sex  _ smudge, not a mark. 

Azra sits, wiping his hands on his pant leg as Crowley pours himself into the spot beside him. “You don’t seem that comfortable with this story,” Crowley says, careful not to sound as judgemental as Azra typically does. “We can talk about something else.” 

“No…no. It’s just…I’ve been having these dreams about,” he gestures vaguely, “someone from my past. Strange dreams, dreams that don’t…don’t make much sense at all.”

Crowley’s lips press together firmly for a moment and he’s a little caught up in his thoughts, something winding about Hell and what they’re up to, really just re-hashing what have apparently become his greatest hits over the past few hours. 

And clearly, it takes far too long for him to finish up, and Azra starts to get more fidgity beside him.

“So,” Azra says, doing that thing he frequently does where he pretends he’s not at all nervous or concerned and straightens his spine—much like a bird ruffling then straightening his wings. For a moment, Crowley tries to imagine him with wings. The image makes his eyes burn. “You are, then? Are you?” 

Crowley lets a series of debating noises slip past his lips before he lands on, “I guess you could say. If you really wanted to.” A beat. “You?” 

“I guess you could say,” Azra echoes. “If you really wanted to. I only…dabbled once,” he admits. “Like I said, before I was a priest. With a dear friend.” 

“Same one you’ve had dreams about?” he asks. Azra hums in acknowledgement so Crowley pushes. “What was his name?” He tries to pretend like it’s from a place of reminding Azra about the carnal pleasures he gave up when he joined the priesthood, but really it’s just from some stinging curiosity that settles low in his chest. 

“Funny thing,” Azra says, voice crackling at the edges. “I don’t remember. I’ve been dreaming about it, about _him_ , this tall man with—I don’t even remember his features, or what he looked like or what he sounded like. I don’t remember anything about him, but I dream about him—vivid, _painfully_ vivid dreams and flashes of this…this feeling of intensity and _love_ that just,” he opens his palm up to the sky, sighing as he watches the nothing from it vanish. “Strange, isn’t it?” 

Crowley’s throat feels dry, painfully, horribly, dry. “Not really,” he says. Pitiful human memories. Crowley can remember every person he’s…hmm.

Hm.

Azra gives him a soft smile, standing up. “What do you say we do lunch?”

Ready to put this conversation behind himself and never, ever mention it again. 

**_###_ **

“Did you make reservations when we talked last week?” Azra asks as they’re seated at Crowley’s usual table at the Ritz, two wine glasses already deposited in front of them. Azra politely waves his away. 

“Hmm?” he asks, peeking over the now-familiar menu. “No, decided on it this morning,” he says, brow furrowing as he tries to make a decision. 

Azra clears his throat, twisting uncomfortably in his seat, clearing feeling awfully out of place. “They greeted you by name,” he half-whispers. 

“Yeah, I’m here often,” he says—eyes fixing on what he’d like to order. “Well, often enough.” He places an order for wine for himself, gesturing to Azra who once again politely declines. 

“I realize now,” Azra says, looking around at the lunch crowd, “I’ve never asked what it is you do for a living.” 

There’s a long string of hesitant noises before Crowley settles on the closest-not-lie he can manage. “Contract work,” he says, burying his nose back into the menu. “Mostly. Here and there.” 

Azra hums in acceptance. “Well, this is lovely,” he says. 

Crowley chiefly comes for the wine. And the atmosphere, and the strange sensation deep in the vast pit of himself that he’s missing something every time he’s here. Not to say he doesn’t eat, but he really doesn’t need to. Nor does he find it as interesting as some of the humans do. He nudges bites to Azra, watching him with his chin propped on his hand as they move past the weight of their previous conversation. 

He makes a solid effort to push past it and not think about it at all. Even a little bit. Not even a tinge. Instead he watches Azra devour a cake in a way that can only be described as obscene. 

Crowley pays the bill and takes the effusive thanks with only minor protests. He’s distracted, constantly, by Azra. Distracted by the wave and movement of his hands as he talks around books and old bookshops, distracted by the sound of his voice as drones on. 

It’s distracting. All of it. 

“So,” he says, once they’ve maneuvered their way back outside, standing sort of on the edge of their evening. “Should I walk you back?” Crowley asks.

Azra gives him a soft little smile. “I’d love that.”

They sort of chatter in and out as they walk. He isn’t even paying enough attention to move the conversation away from the one topic he really,  _ really  _ doesn’t want to talk about once it starts meandering towards them. 

“The original sin,” Azra breathes, hands sweeping out in front of himself. And Crowley blesses internally. “That’s what we should’ve started with. Apples and Eve and Lucifer tempting mankind.”

“Lucifer didn’t—” Oh,  _ now  _ he’s going to stick his foot in it. If only because Lucifer didn’t do a damned—blessed—he didn’t do a  _ thing  _ about the apple. That was all Crowley. Crowley’s idea, even. That was his trouble to be making and  _ damn  _ him if he wasn’t going to get the proper credit for that. “What I meant is,” Crowley says, “is that we put a lot of blame on that apple and who tempted who into biting what and who told who about it. When really, if God didn’t want anyone biting anything She would’ve put it somewhere ele! Anywhere else. But instead She stuck it right in front of the first two of the most curious beings in the  _ world  _ and told them not to eat it. It was a set-up, a trap!” 

He’s so worked up he stops walking, long arms waving around himself as he starts into a fervor. “The moon, or other planets, or somewhere not  _ in  _ the bloody garden. She said don’t eat the apple, so maybe She should’ve made the apple a little harder to get to. It’s like She  _ wanted  _ them to fail. If anything, She could’ve kept  _ me  _ out of it.” 

By the time he comes down, taking in harsh breaths through his nose, Azra looks properly ill. He’s hunched over, his face scrunched in pain and — very luckily for Crowley, probably didn’t hear too much of that. Though, now that Crowley’s actually paying attention, he rushes to his side. Steadying him with two hands on his shoulders, he tries to get a good look at him.

“Azra?” he asks, flexing the same sort of miracle-fixing muscles he used before to fix Azra’s headaches. But it doesn’t work, or at least it doesn’t seem to work. So he tries again, and again, heart thrumming in his chest. “What’s wrong?” he asks because whatever it is—he can’t fix it, and he can fix almost anything. 

Azra tries to shake him off, tries to toss his head and pull away and Crowley lets him. “I’m fine, dear boy,” he pants, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Something just...must be the pollen.” He looks dizzy, loose-limbed and still wincing at every whir and roar of passing cars. People are looking at them, well, not so much looking as glancing, drawing a face and quickly walking away. 

Crowley hovers his hands around him, unsure if he wants to grab onto him and steady him or let him go. His stomach twists itself into violent knots. Demons don’t get sick, demons don’t get themselves so wrapped up in humans that they’re worried about everything about them. Worried about his headaches, worried that he’s gotten home alright, worried that Heaven’s  _ done something  _ to him. 

It all happens very quickly. In general, time passes quickly for Crowley. Once you’ve lived a solid six thousand years on Earth, you start to realize how fast a moment is. Sometimes he swears he turns around a whole new empire has risen and crumbled in the time it takes him to blink. 

In this moment, it feels like it takes ages for Azra to pull his hand back, to shake his head and say he’s  _ fine,  _ he just needs to go lie down, hands still rubbing at his head and eyes, whole body still rocking on his feet. It feels like decades for him to step off the curb, another century for Crowley’s ears to prick with the very-near sound of a car. 

Crowley doesn’t think. He reaches out, entire body following through to shove Azra out of the way. 

The whole thing took what felt like six thousand years all over again—and yet just a half-second for the car to hit him instead.


	6. Chapter 6

Good News: He hasn’t been discorperated.

Bad News: Dear Go— Dear Satan this hurts. 

He picks his face off the pavement, wincing at the pain and the scrape of his shattered sunglasses over the pavement. He squints, grunting as he arches his back a little, getting his hands under him despite a too-warm hand resting between his shoulder blades urging him back down. “Don’t get up, dear,” the voice, watery and distant, above him murmurs. “You might be badly hurt.”

“M’not,” he mumbles, using a bit of quick miracle-work to mend his broken ribs and a couple of the vertebrae in his back conveniently meld back together but oh— oh, that’s not something you can miracle away. He squeezes his eyes shut at a radiating throb of pain starts from somewhere far off his back. 

Just because humans can’t see or feel his wings doesn’t mean they’re not always there. They pass through them (honestly giving him quite the shivers), or walk around them, but they’re always there. Phased into another realm of existence and space, but present nonetheless. They still move, raise when he’s annoyed, stretch out when he’s tired, hunch over himself when he’s got a particularly good glass of wine he’s not so inclined to share. 

And he can feel them. Moving, shifting, passing through chairs or instinctively moving around busy humans.

And occasionally, just the right sort of shock can break through the veil between those realms. Like the shock of being hit by a fucking car. 

One wing straightens, still invisible to the human eye, flapping in distress as his other struggles to follow. Nothing important broken, some feathers rustled, but that is absolutely bruised and _absolutely_ painful. He gasps, dropping down to one elbow and tensing every other muscle in his body to keep from making a much louder, much less kind noise. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, Azra’s hand moving to rub small circles just under the nape of his neck. Soothing, in the sort of way it’s soothing to lie on hot sand. 

“The ambulance will be here soon, Anthony,” Azra whispers, his voice sounds strange. Familiar but in a strange sort of way. Like it’s heaven, laden down with something. 

Oh. Crowley pushed him out of the way. 

Humans and their guilt. “M’fine,” Crowley mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut to try to will it to be true. He gathers all the strength he has, reminds himself this is nowhere near as bad as swallowing mouthfuls of boiling sulfur, and pushes himself up to his knees. He cracks his neck, and looks up at Azra who cannot stop staring at him, those ridiculously plush lips parted and that sweet breath not coming. 

He blinks once, then twice, touching his face. His hands come away still scraped up (but that’s fixed in a blink) but otherwise clear of blood.

Good, so he’s not lost anything then. He then looks down where his sunglasses are absolutely ruined on the pavement beneath him. “Ah, fuck,” he says, for the second time in quite a short while. Azra can’t stop staring. 

Very impolite. Crowley must be doing his job well, then. “Like I said,” he says, slowly, withdrawing a by-miracle-not-destroyed pair from his breast pocket and sliding them into place. “Eye condition. Very sensitive to…people being sensitive to it.” 

Azra coughs. “Right. Of course. I…. Are you sure you should be standing? No! You shouldn’t!” he says, immediately bringing an arm down around his waist. “Sit down and…sit there until the ambulance arrives.” 

Shaking the pain out of an arm, Crowley snaps once, the large him-shaped dent on the car popping back into shape, the spider-web cracks of the windshield melting back together. “See. Not even a scratch.” He stumbles up to his feet, feeling quite a bit like one of those baby…those, uh. Whatever those things are with the legs and the necks. And spots. He feels like one of those. 

The Earth wobbles a little and he falls back on his ass, wing throbbing at the movement. “Giraffe,” he mumbles, scrubbing his face. 

Azra frowns, kneeling and hovering his hands over his face as if he wants to touch but isn’t sure how. “Giraffes?” he asks, those big expressive eyes brimming with concern. “What about giraffes?”

“What I feel like right now. How’s your head?” 

Azra blinks, like he’d forgotten all about what put him in this position. “My…it…it went away. As soon as I saw— I…I’m fine, Anthony.” His voice is soft, the sort of gentleness that makes Crowley’s brain struggle to remember the sort of human conventions of names. 

First names, they’re by their very nature intimate. Calling him Anthony, it’s the sort of thing that would be special for humans. It’s not _really_ his name; it’s just a sort of thing he picked thinking it would look nice together (really it was the name on a sign within his line of sight when someone asked if that was his first or last name). 

“Good. Glad. And really,” he says, struggling back to his feet and grunting as his wings both stretch out. He almost corrects him, tells him to call him Crowley, but the sentiment of it settles in his chest and it’s hard to untangle that. 

The ambulance arrives and it’s much easier telling _them_ he’s fine than it is convincing Azra. They prod and poke him before letting him limp off, though they won’t be too sure why later—but they do, and that’s the important part. He starts off, his wing hanging a little too heavy to keep his usual saunter for more than a few steps, decisively heading home. 

But, of course, Azra has other ideas. “Where do you think,” he huffs, stepping in front of him, “you are going?” 

“Home.” Well, back to his flat. Maybe. He's hoping he can at least drag himself off to an alley somewhere and use a little demonic translocation. Probably won’t damage himself anymore than he already is. Though he is a bit tired. Might not make it all the way.

“I’m not that far,” Azra decides. “Come back with me, sit. At least for a little while? Let me put some ice on you and make you a cup of tea. Please? I…” He’s flushed, a sort of rich pink that reminds Crowley of some kind of dessert. “I’d really like to make sure you’re _certain_ you’re alright. And I’d much rather you weren’t alone, just in case.” 

Crowley blinks, and remembers, for the second time, why he ended up in front of the car. It really wasn’t even a thought. His body is much more resilient. Plus, if it gets destroyed he’s only inconveniently discorperated. If Azra got hurt—well. That’s not a good thought to have. 

It makes him feel all squidgy. 

Strategically, it would be good, right. Something about being in his space, corrupting him that way. There really should be something there. He’s certain. “If it’s that important to you,” he ends up saying, Azra sliding up to his side and guiding Crowley’s arm over his shoulder. Azra wraps his own around his waist, pulling some of Crowley’s weight onto himself. 

“I promise you,” he says, looking down at the priest, “you really don’t need to do this.” 

“Crowley,” he says, “stop complaining and let me take care of you. You did just save my life.” 

“Not sure how true that is.” If anything, he saved his back. Which, well, that’s something—but Crowley isn’t going to point that out. Seems a bit gauche. It felt more like some strong sleeping instinct to him, not even the sort of thing you think about. Just the sort of thing you _do._ Like he’d saved Azra a hundred times already, what’s once more.

“Really,” Azra says, pausing as they start down the road, “like a guardian angel.” 

That hurts much, much worse than the car. 

**_###_ **

Azra’s flat is exactly nothing like Crowley thought it would be. Granted, he’d only spent a few days total imagining it—so it’s not a whole lot of hard work immediately undone once the priest guides him down onto a soft couch piled high with tartan blankets. The blankets he expected, and the piles of old books lovingly taking up as much space as possible on what appears to be nearly every horizontal surface. 

The rest, not so much. Crowley takes a deep breath as he arranges his wings, the sensation of passing the injured one through things a bit dizzying, while Azra fixes him a cup of tea and fetches a cold compress for his side (which Crowley magicks up to look bruised, considering it would be awfully strange for him to be quite literally _uninjured_ ) _._ The flat is decorated with _snakes._

Snakes everywhere. Sketches framed on the walls, golden antique snake lamps, snake coasters, little snake patterns on the throw pillows. He even has a little _Sansevieria trifasciata_ sitting on a shelf. Crowley blinks at all of them, nodding towards one particular wrought-iron creature holding up more blankets. “Fond of serpents?” he asks, heart aflutter for some unspoken reason. 

“Hmm?” Azra starts, setting the cup down on the table and looking to where Crowley gestured. “Oh! I am. Can’t say why. Every time I’m in an antique shop and I see one I just…I can’t put it down. It’s become a little,” he looks around, frowning. “Much.” 

“Not at all,” Crowley replies, grunting as he stretches out, lolling his head to watch as Azra sits beside him, just a hair too close. 

“May I?” he asks, gesturing. “I’m not a doctor but I would like to make sure I don’t have to force you to A&E.” 

Crowley looks down where Azra gestures. His jacket? He can take that off. He does, shuddering at the sensation of hands and fabric bothering his wings but Azra keeps looking, expectant, his quivering hands hovering still low on Crowley’s waist. 

Oh. Well, he guesses he didn’t give himself a bruise for nothing. Crowley swallows, sitting forward and slipping the fabric up. His fake bruise is still just a red mark, the promise of a dark purple lingering in the inflamed center. It's more on his back, just under where his wing is. 

Azra gasps, a horrible sound that makes Crowley wish he'd pretended he was all right entirely. Miracle from God. He shifts closer, pressing a hand to the bare skin. Crowley was all prepared to hiss, to pretend to recoil. Really, he’d practiced in his mind and everything. 

But he just keeps staring, unable to tear his eyes away from the fingers brushing the edge of the redness. “Oh dear,” Azra breathes, throat sounding awfully tight. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. Does it…” He swallows, audibly, and moves closer until their knees brush. “Does it hurt?” 

Ribs? No. Wing? Yes. “Not that bad, really,” he says, pushing up his glasses and looking away because Azra is very close right now. Incredibly close, the sort of _all-Crowley-can-smell-is-his-cologne_ sort of close. It’s practically suffocating him, invading his mind and fogging over his senses. 

Azra doesn’t stop touching him, thumb sweeping over the marks. All of Crowley’s focus is on trying not to do anything stupid, trying not to say anything stupid. Don’t let him see your back. Keep steady, remember to wince when he brushes deep over the mark—if he ever does it. 

“Crowley?” His voice is tentative, hand lifting with concerned sort of movement. 

“Hmm?” he hums, opening one of his tightly-shut eyes at him. 

“You weren’t breathing.” 

Right. He forgot about that. He starts up again, sniffing. “Sorry. Distracted. By the,” he gestures vaguely at himself. “Car-wounds.” 

“You don’t have to wear those,” he says, “if it’s not too bright for you.” 

“Too bright? It’s not too bright in here,” he mumbles, confused, for a moment, before Azra’s hand comes up to his glasses, brushing the metal frames for half a second. He pauses, breath freezing for a moment. He wants to pause, wants to brush those hands away. Instead, some warm, festering, instinct re-awakens, nudging his head forward just an inch, closer, a half-done nod.  
  
And there they go. Azra folds them up and sets them down with a click, leaving Crowley to blink a few times to adjust. “Well. That’s fine,” he says, sniffing again and glancing away.

Azra hasn’t moved. Their knees are still touching. “You have beautiful eyes,” he says, right on the edge of a warm sigh. “Really.”

His chest is doing funny things, familiar things. His skin aches for Azra’s touch again, like it’s something he’s been missing but he didn’t know. It craves the gentle pass of his hand again, the heat radiating off it. 

“Better,” Azra says, voice barely above a tender whisper as he carefully takes the pack from Crowley. “Turn a bit more.” 

And he does and those hands are back, one resting between his shoulder blades (between his wings) the other circling the injury as if carefully mapping its edges. The touch itself is soothing, the kind of familiar stroke of a lover over skin—fingers tracing patterns that light up with the kind of sweet-sting of intimacy. Crowley pretends he doesn’t think about that, he pretends he doesn’t feel the ghost of these fingers all up and down his body.

Pretends he doesn’t _swear_ he knows what it feels like for Azra to touch him everywhere. Curious, investigative touches up and down his chest, nervous hands skating his thighs. 

“I think you’ll be fine,” Azra says, with a few tentative presses against the bruises that Crowley forgets to flinch for. Crowley leans back against the couch, and only one of Azra’s hands falls away. The other one rests on his knee, like it fell there by instinct and memory and Azra hasn’t even noticed. 

“Told you, didn’t hurt,” he says, really wishing his sunglasses were back on to hide the way he couldn’t look away. 

“You pushed me out of the way,” Azra replies, still not moving away. 

“Couldn’t have you getting killed on me, would be embarrassing for the both of us, really,” Crowley says and he’s not moving away either. There’s something between them, something that feels like that moment, right at the edge of a steep cliff, nothing but gut-twisting anticipation and the race of fire in your veins. It feels like the moment right before the fireworks explode, right before the lightning strikes the dried-out trees. The moment before fire sweeps the forests and turns beauty to ash.

The moment right before Heaven’s floor breaks open and an angel Falls.

And Crowley really, really wants to lean in and finish this whole business. There’s nothing _inherently_ evil about the whole thing—but he strongly doubts that iron-clad soul remains so untarnished under the press of Crowley’s lips. 

But the idea of that, the idea of making that light...dim. Of taking something he can never give back. That happiness, that purity, that trust and faith and _love_ for the human condition. Crowley’s throat seals up and he leans back, nudging Azra’s hand off himself and snatching his glasses off the table. 

“How’s the head?” he asks, tugging his shirt back on and ignoring the protest of his bruised wing. 

Azra clears his throat, standing up to busy himself with straightening a stack of books. “Good. Thank you for asking. Haven’t had one that clear since we met. Could really hear them this time.” 

Crowley grunts, pushing himself off the table. No need to stick around, not when he would absolutely do something extremely stupid if he did. “I should—” Wait, what? “Hear who? A headache that...makes you hear something?” 

Azra looks incredibly guilty and fixes the same stack of books again. Then unfixes it, and fixes it once more. “Did I say that? I—funny. I didn’t, well, I wouldn’t say I _meant_ to say it. More that...it was the—was the.... Certainly I didn’t say that, don’t think I did at all,” he coughs. “Would you like some tea? Are you hungry? I know strong bursts of adrenaline like that can-can make you feel...hungry.” He trails off, turning back around to face the stack of books and proceeds to re-adjust them again. 

“Heard them,” Crowley repeats, something dreadful sinking in the pit of his gut. Hell wanted him to fail, didn’t they—? Well, obviously they did; Hell doesn’t ever want good things to happen to anyone, not even their own kind. Not a lot of things in the universe have headaches that make them _hear_ things. Headaches are by their very nature, muddled bits of pain—throbbing, sharp, no matter what sort _._ “Oh, angel, you don’t have just headaches, do you?” 

This is bad. This is very bad and Crowley has no idea why. But hearing voices in combination with bright flashes of white lights, it never means anything good, it only means things that are very, very bad. Everything starts to churn together slowly, and Crowley starts to put pieces together but it’s like he’s doing it upside down, no idea what pictures these pieces are trying to show him.

“Sometimes,” Azra says, “I hear things. And-and-and I know what you’re thinking.” He turns quickly, hands out to stop him, as if Crowley was at all planning on leaving before he got an explanation. “I’m not...you know.” He gestures up at his temple. “I just…it was part of the reason I joined the priesthood. I got these headaches during services and I could _hear_ things during them and _see_ things. And-and-and please, believe me, Crowley.  
  
I know it sounds _ridiculous_ but it’s true, and I can’t do anything about it, I tried to make them stop but I don’t _want_ them to stop. I see them and I hear them like I was  _there._  Like I'm hearing angels."

The dreams, the feelings, the coat in Crowley’s flat he can’t explain, the things that changed that he doesn’t know why, the strange sensation of doing things for the second, third, or hundredth time around. All the feelings of _missing_ things.

Azra’s eyes fill with tears. “ _Crowley_ ,” his voice is pleading, half-step forward aborted after a movement, “please, I can’t explain it, but if you just trust me—”

Crowley’s teeth set on edge at the sight, bile burning in the back of his throat. “I have to,” he gestures to the door behind himself, watching Azra start to crumble—wide, watery, eyes immediately seeking the floor. “It’s not because—it’s not, y’know…it’s something different. Totally different.”

He holds up a hand, then drops it, not entirely sure what he was planning on doing with it anyway. "I swear," he says, "on...everything."   
  
Every instinct in his body, every bone, every joint begs,  _begs,_ him to step forward, to pull Azra into his arms and kiss him. Crowley forces a foot backwards, stomach sinking. All the things he wants to say stick in his throat.   
  
He turns, and he goes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the endgame now, people


	7. Chapter 7

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. 

Crowley hurries down the road, muttering to himself a litany of swears in every single language he knows. The priest’s not a priest. That much is clear by now—but whatever he is, it doesn’t even seem like Azra knows. His feet are driving him towards the main entrance, where he could go grab Hastur by his lapels and slam him into a wall a few times to shake some answers loose.

Fuck.

Fucking fuck. 

The wind blows the scent of rain towards him and it stirs up all sorts of ghosts. These ones far more clear as the burn their way past whatever barrier is up inside his head. 

Hands on his skin and the smell of holy things and cologne and—and hands, twisting to produce a coin. A coin? That’s absurd, it was in his pocket. 

In Azra’s pocket? Having a row in the bandstand, sharing champagne at the Ritz, talking about unicorns and carpenters and dolphins and crepes and—and Azra is there. His smile, his eyes, the way he reached out a hand on the bus that ended up in London. 

Everywhere, he is constantly there. Azra, with white wings spread out behind himself, the picture of grace and beauty framed in the grey-cast of an oncoming storm. The first storm. Oh no. 

No. No, no, no, no, no. 

All of it, all of it, Azra is there. In all the places Crowley knows he was alone. He knows he was alone there because he  _ remembers  _ being alone there. But Azra is there, Azra is there but—it’s not Azra. He’s wearing…he’s got… _ wings.  _

Crowley bends at the waist right there on the sidewalk. “What the fuck,” he hisses to himself. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.” (Crowds side-step him, ignoring him as pointedly and politely as people can ignore a minor but well-needed breakdown). “Shit, shit, shit,  _ shit,”  _ he hops back and straightens, hands in his fiery hair. “Fucking,  _ fuck.”  _

Azra is an  _ angel.  _

But he can’t be, he very,  _ very  _ much can’t be. Crowley would know; he would know because he could tell. He should be able to see past the veil of the realms of existence, see his wings, see  _ him  _ without the—oh fuck him, he wasn’t looking at a soul. Souls are  _ shaped  _ a lot like essences, angelic ones, at least. Demonic essences are more like the very drippings from a wrung-out nightmare. They’re just...brighter. Holier. A Hell of a lot harder to damage and oh, oh Crowley’s an idiot, isn’t he? 

Quite a time to figure that out, isn’t it? 

He’s got to go downstairs. He’s got to go talk to Beelzebub and ask questions and figure out  _ really, did you guys send me to tempt and corrupt an angel? That’s not really funny, now, is it?  _ This isn’t a game, this shouldn’t be game. He just likes messing with people, is all. Making them annoyed and angry and upset. He likes overflowing power lines right before the series finale of Bake-Off (not at the  _ end,  _ he’s not a monster), he likes crashing card readers and making lines go cash-only. He likes traffic on the M-25, he likes swapping out salt and sugar. He likes ruining people’s days, and them ruining other people's days and them ruining other people's days. 

He likes chaos, but just enough to keep life interesting. 

He doesn’t want to...to…. He rubs his eyes beneath his sunglasses, groaning as he stands back up and curses God right to Her face. 

“That’s not very nice,” a voice chides behind him. If Crowley’s blood wasn’t already cold, it’d run like ice. 

The voice behind him comes from a man—well, to be more exact, an angel. To be  _ more  _ exact, an Archangel. 

“Gabriel,” Crowley says, in an effort to be the most exact, as he turns to face him. “To what do I owe the incredible displeasure?” 

Flanked on either side by Michael and Uriel, Gabriel smiles that terrible, condescending smile. “I think you know. We picked up a  _ whole  _ lot of energy from our dear friend’s apartment.” He twirls a finger, and Crowley glances about surreptitiously to see if that started anything happening. It didn’t. “We put a lot of work into fixing what you did to him, sort of like doing whatever it is humans do when their cells start to do that...thing and ruin their mortal bodies.” 

_ Cutting out tumors,  _ Crowley thinks—but doesn’t say. If only because it would give Gabriel something else to say. Not that he needs it of course. “I don’t know what game Hell thinks it’s playing sending  _ you  _ to try to ‘tempt’ him, but it won’t work, Crowley. If we have to undo everything you did again, wrap him up, and drop him on another continent, we will.” 

Crowley’s stomach settles at the bottom of his snakeskin boots. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lies, half-hoping (but not praying. Not at all. Not even in the back of his mind) that Gabriel lets slip his whole plan. He’s an angel, probably never seen a Bond movie. 

Gabriel leans in, breath stinking of Heaven. “You do. Do yourself a favor, don’t mess with this, alright?” 

He strikes another ugly grin before he and his cronies up and vanish once more. 

Great. Perfect. Wonderful. Crowley snarls up at the empty skies, a distant promise of thunder his only response. 

With nowhere else to turn (no way he’d bring this to Hell, unless he wants a bath in holy water), Crowley does what he does best. He goes home and gets pissed. 

Not exactly in the mood to take it out on the plants, Crowley pours himself into his chair—carefully balancing the first glass of the third bottle of wine between two fingers. “Me? Why me,” he asks himself, throwing the glass back before refilling it, sloshing a bit onto himself—but it just sizzles away. “An angel, really—an  _ angel  _ of all things. Is Hell really hurting for numbers…. No, we’re not. It’s so  _ crowded  _ down there...and tempting? That wouldn’t...no angel would fall for that.” He muffles a belch into his hand. “No angel would  _ Fall  _ for that.”

Feeling rather suddenly tired with sitting, Crowley gets up, setting his glass down to pace the halls like a tiger desperately in need of enrichment. “Does he know he’s an angel—why would...why would he even let me get close if he knows—why would he let me.” A short little growl rolls up his throat as he snatches the antique answering machine on his desk and wheels around to throw it at the wall. It shatters in an unholy display of plastic and electronics before landing immediately back in one piece on the floor (without a scratch, but incredibly traumatized).

“Can’t _anything_ just be easy? I was doing so good, I was doing so fine. What did I do to deserve this? I didn’t—all I _do_ is my job, all I do is make peoples lives a little miserable, just a _bit.”_ He throws things as he snarls. Wine bottles, empty flower pots, full flower pots. Nothing is safe from the hurricane of frustration and rage and confusion that unleashes with a sort of tidal flow that threatens to devastate the entire flat. “Tell me,” he hisses, stomping a foot as if he could kick all of Hell for an answer, “what happened, tell me what you _did_ to me.” 

The only thing that stops him is when his fingers fist into fabric—ready to let it join the pile of things breaking over on the opposite wall. He stops, harsh breaths sucking in through his nose and out through hissed teeth—he can feel his eyes burn with something (the glow of manic range-induced power, or unshed, angry, tears? Crowley doesn’t know) and he almost doesn’t want to look down at it. 

He pries his too-tight fingers off the jacket one at a time. 

This time, when he looks at it, he  _ knows  _ it’s Azra’s. It’s Azra’s because in all those thoughts, all those memories that aren’t memories—he’s wearing it. But the more Crowley thinks, the more he knows it’s not  _ Azra.  _ His rolls the name around on his tongue, the now-familiar unfamiliarity tasting sour and bitter.

Carefully, like he’s holding something that might suddenly deteriorate to nothing as soon as he realizes what it is, he presses it back up to his face. 

He closes his eyes and breathes and he can smell him, the warm underpinning of spice and the cool sharpness of holy energy. It awakens more of the sleeping memories, seeping through the cracks in the wall of his mind.  _ I know what you smell like.  _ It sits heavy on the back of his mind. 

If he tries, he can remember the taste, the smell, the feel—like ghosts swarming up around him. 

“What did they do to you?” he asks the jacket, as if it might have any inkling of an answer. 

The jacket, of course, does not. It sits, limp and confounding, in Crowley’s hands—entirely unaware of all the trouble it’s caused and all the trouble it’s saved. 

Crowley only knows a handful of things for certain.

1: Hell did something to him.

2: Heaven did something to Azra.

3: Azra isn’t Azra, both in terms of  _ that’s not his name  _ and  _ he’s no priest.  _ In fact,

4: Azra is an angel.

5: No one, absolutely no one, can help him right now. 

6: He has no idea what to do with this information.

7: He really, really, needs to stop making lists.

There’s an itching under his skin he can’t explain and he carries the jacket over to the window, draping it over one arm and peering out down at the street. Something twinges in the back of his mind, reminding him that something’s missing. 

He squints, the fire in his veins burning off the alcohol (a bit literally, he could sober up the easy way but he doesn’t tend to stay drunk for long) and making his head much sharper. Whatever he’d done had started the process of cracking through whatever barrier Hell had set up in his mind. It makes it easier to stir up something else, to remember something he might be missing. 

Crowley stares down at the empty spot on the street beneath his window, lips curving into an entirely wrathful curl.    
  
“Where,” he says, with the sort of icy realization that comes with being more angry than one’s entire body could contain, “is my car?” 

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that Crowley was  _ more  _ upset about someone plucking the memories of his car from his mind than he was about Azra—the angel, whatever his name is—but more so the whole nature of the  _ messing around in his head  _ sort of thing. Jacket balled up under his arm, Crowley storms his way down to the street, whipping his head around to see if he could spot it. 

His car. Why the...why his  _ car?  _ It doesn’t pull up any sordid memories of doing anything particularly horrible in it, he doesn’t think it was at all connected to this whole angel business. If anything, he’s fairly certain that the whole business about the Bentley was  _ someone  _ thinking they were being particularly clever when they were really being incredibly,  _ incredibly  _ stupid. 

He saw it. He  _ knows  _ he saw it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to think,  _ think,  _ back to what he was doing when he saw it. Walking? No, he always walks, he always walks because they  _ stole his car.  _

“C’mon,” he growls, tangling his fingers into his hair. “Think, think, you stupid demon—you’ve had that thing from _new_ ; you know where it is.” 

In a moment he can see it, feel her. Exactly where he parked her.

_**###** _

He finds her parked outside some abandoned bookshop, still as perfectly flawless and sharp as ever. “There you are,” he breathes, walking his fingers up her pristine hood. He touches her everywhere he can reach, voice crooning low as he strokes the edges of her mirrors,“I am going to find whoever took you from me,” he breathes, “and I am going to tear them limb from limb.” 

She unlocks under his touch, and he slides in effortlessly, dropping the jacket on the passenger seat. The smells and touch overwhelms him for a moment, seeping into his pores and drinking him in as much as he drinks it in. He shudders out a breath as he settles a hand on the top of the wheel, giving it a few good squeezes. “Right,” he says, as she purrs to life under his touch. “Now what?” 

Good question. He looks either way, not so much for traffic but for direction. Of course there’s no sign pointing him the right way to go, no Divine Guidance saying  _ do this one now, Crowley, and it will answer all the questions you’ve had about whatever happened this past-whoever-knows-how-long.  _

All it is is him, the Bentley, and an angel's jacket. He reaches down with one hand and strokes down the fabric, thumbing along the sleeve again. 

It’s then, in that exact moment, that he finds the sign. Well, a sign on a shop. He stares out the window, blinking at the boarded up bookshop he’d walked past a hundred times. Inside, it gathers dust, it waits impatiently for whoever owns it to come home. He stares inside the windows, and remembers, remembers with sudden, ineffable clarity walking in those doors too many times to count. Pushing them in, snapping them open, slipping in—every which way he could go through those doors, he has. 

The smell of old books and dust and the faintest hint of cocoa and nutmeg and something that smells like Home. Home, in this sense being distinctly  _ not  _ any sort of loathing. It smelled like love. The whole place reeked of it, drenched in careful, quiet love. Love that stained the air around them, permeating senses until it was all Crowley could smell every time he was in there. The all-consuming feeling of love, of the place being loved, of the place being  _ filled  _ with love. 

He never hated it, he didn’t scorn it, didn’t sneer at it. He was part of the problem. 

His eyes slither up, up as his chest tugs on itself. _A_. _ Z Fell & Co.  _

A. Z Fell. Azra Fell. 

“Az,” Crowley sounds out, the muscles in his mouth and throat and tongue twisting up together in ways he doesn’t understand, like he’s trying to force himself to make noises he’s been forbidden from doing. AZ. Azra Fell, A. Z. Fell. 

It comes to him with a bolt of blinding white-hot pain right through his eyes. Without his say-so, the Bentley roars, rumbling, ready to go. 

He presses on the gas and she leaps forward, following his every command as if, as if it had been no time at all. His knuckles bleach insistent points against his flesh as he speeds through the streets of London, teeth gritting as the needle shivers, pushing up past ninety-five. 

“Come on,” he croons to the car, eyes burning with flashes of red and heat and fire and things he doesn’t want to think about right now. It runs across his mind like a chant until he skids, leaving black tire marks behind him, in front of a building he left only a few short hours ago.

The rain comes down in buckets, and he doesn’t think fast enough to do something about it. All he can think of is the step in front of him, how close he is, how much his chest feels ready to burst. Explode under all the pressure of things he doesn’t remember and things he does remember and thinks he remembers but it has to be wrong—it has to be wrong. 

The spot beside him on the gate where he watched the humans turn to specks on the horizon, it was  _ never  _ empty. He was never alone in St. James Park. 

He was  _ never  _ alone. 

He takes the steps two at a time, not stopping to snap away the water that plasters his hair to the sides of his face, or that squishes in his snake-skin boots. He pounds on the door, breathing harsh and ragged. 

Azra—no,  _ not  _ Azra—opens, brows furrowed. He looks so different and so much the same as he always has. His eyes and nose are pink, the sort of horrid flush that comes from having a very, very terrible day and Crowley can apologize later. Right now, he has other, far more pressing matters to attend to.

He stares for a moment, drinking in the sight of the angel he now absolutely recognizes. So much the same as every confusing flash of not-is memories or strange hallucination. He feels so much the same when Crowley slots one palm on either side of his cheek. His chest won’t stop hurting, like it’s being constricted again and again. “Crowley, what are you—” 

He’s silenced by the press of Crowley’s lips against his own, a moment brief and familiar and it plays back in Crowley’s mind the dozens upon dozens of times they’d done that since that Sunday after the world didn’t end. God—Satan—oh who cares, how,  _ how,  _ could he have forgotten that? 

It’s everything at once, it’s six thousand years of history, six thousand years of waiting, six thousand years of wanting, six thousand years of loving—all crashing down and swallowing him whole as he kisses him. 

For once, for once in so long—everything is just Right. 

The face in his hands doesn’t pull back. Crowley’s lips form the word, the name, before he has the breath to say it. 

_ “Aziraphale.”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confetti sprinkles down around us.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains: Flashbacks

Crowley  
_Fifteen Months Earlier,  
Eight Months after the End Of the World_

Funny thing, love is. You ask anyone, really anyone, if a demon can fall in love and almost every last one will say no. ‘Course they can’t, God is Love and demons are things without God. Things without Love. 

It’s what makes them evil. 

Ask one particular demon, the one who spends all his time in a bookshop with an angel, if demons can love and he’ll respond with a series of affronted noises before turning around and leaving you without an answer. That is because this demon is in love. 

Ask the angel in the bookshop and _he’ll_ tell you demons can in fact love. Unfortunately, upon receiving your answer, you will be forced (not by any sort of magic other than, perhaps, the infernal magic of politeness) to sit and have a cup of tea while the angel recounts six thousand and eight months worth of stories regarding how he met the Demon Who Fell In Love. 

Really, the only interesting bit is the last eight months. The only part that, upon reaching it in his story, the angel will flush, get flustered, and immediately ask you if you need more tea.

See, eight months ago, the world did not end. It was supposed to, but four children, two supernatural beings, a witch, two witchfinders, and a part-time-dominatrix-full-time-pretend-psychic stopped it. (There was also a hellhound, a mailman, and another, wrong, boy — but we’re not telling this story. That story’s already been told.)

The evening after, one angel kissed one demon in the comfort of a cold, concrete, and sparsely decorated loft. They then proceeded to kiss quite a bit more, over the last eight months. 

The demon, Crowley, particularly enjoys the whole kissing bit. He’d imagined for quite some time what it would be like to kiss the angel (there had been a moment, back around 1246 — a couple years before Sainte-Chapelle was consecrated, when it was safe for Crowley to poke around a bit and see the new architecture. Aziraphale had a few drops of some ruby wine clinging to the edge of his lip. It took him a moment to realize, and in those moments, Crowley imagined licking it off.) 

He actually enjoys nearly everything that came with being whatever they were. He can do things like slip into the shop, slither through the shelves until he reaches the back office, finding Aziraphale hunched over some volume, practically nose-to-paper with his reading glasses (which he does not need) staying on his nose by miracle only.

He’d done that before, of course, but _before_ he would clear his throat, make the angel jump and turn his nose up and chide Crowley for sneaking up on him. 

 _Now_ he keeps walking, taking in a deep breath and leaning over the back of the chair, so his lips are just behind his ear. “Hey, angel,” he purrs. 

Aziraphale jumps, snapping the book shut. “Crowley! Don’t _do that,”_ he hisses, turning an annoyed frown up to him. “You scared me. I could’ve reacted! I could’ve smote you.”

“Oh, you’d smite me,” he asks, brow quirked. He left his sunglasses on a table when he’d come in—no need to hide here. 

“By accident, I might,” Azriaphale says, getting up and circling the chair—he’s not much of an instigator, at least not when sober, so he doesn’t exactly push up and kiss him, but he does brush against him softly as he walks past. Incidental, but entirely intentional touches. Calculated in the way that's supposed to seem casual. 

Crowley takes comfort in the knowledge that it means he’s trying to be more at ease. There was no rocketing right from _we’re not friends; I don’t even like you_ to _let me hold your face and snog you senseless like we’re teenagers and our parents aren’t home._

He’s been trying to show a few signs of that himself, doing general human shows of affection. It took a while to train the _Sansevieria_ Crowley left on Aziraphale’s desk one evening while the angel was out. He’d taped a card with instructions but the plant ought to know that it couldn’t go dying on Aziraphale. Crowley made certain it was well aware of its role. 

Plus it was good for a dark shop and forgetful angel. 

Aziraphale never mentioned it, but Crowley spotted it migrated near a window, a little tartan bow wrapped around its pot. 

He gives other gifts, leaves them in conspicuous places in the bookshop. A manuscript here, a box of chocolates there. Miracles, they’re gifts too Crowley supposes. A silent way for him to inform the angel that he rather does enjoy his company and would like to keep doing that. 

Aziraphale returns the favor in his own way. Touches, books on plant care, fine wine. And now? 

“Tea?” Aziraphale asks as he puts the kettle on.

“Please,” he replies, following to lean in the doorway, watching Aziraphale putter. “Not going to ask why I came?” 

In the little kitchenette, Aziraphale frowns. “I thought to see me? To…sit in the same room and talk? As...whatever-we-are’s do?” 

Now, in the past eight months, _that_ had been a subject of hearty conversation. Kisses turned to, well, what sometimes kisses often turn to—something they do rather frequently, and rather enjoyably though more often than not at Crowley’s than in the bookshop (Aziraphale won’t tolerate petting of any sort anywhere _near_ his books. Plus, he doesn’t have a bed. Or suitable horizontal surfaces without books). And sometimes afterwards, Aziraphale would ask and Crowley wouldn’t have an answer. 

Well, he does, but apparently, _we’re us, angel, that’s all we have to be_ doesn’t suffice when your whatever-you-are is asking what you are. In the end, Crowley wouldn’t accept _lover_ and Aziraphale had no tolerance for _partner._

“Thought we could do dinner,” Crowley says, not rising to the bait. “Thought I’d stop in and ask.”

Aziraphale raises a brow as he continues with the tea, stopping its whistle and making Crowley’s cup exactly how he prefers. “You usually call if you just want to do dinner,” Aziraphale points out, setting the cup on the ledge nearest Crowley. 

“Might’ve also wanted to sit in the same room as you and talk,” he admits, watching for the tell-tale curve of Aziraphale’s lips. There it is, perfect. Right there. A little self-assured warmth hits his chest. 

Aziraphale pretends like he isn’t smiling, looking back at Crowley then distinctly frowning again back at the cup until he remembers that he’s not supposed to be pretending like he isn’t happy anymore. They’re allowed to be happy now. Well, no one’s stopping them, at least. 

“Where did you have in mind, dear?” 

Crowley picks at his nails. He doesn’t have to, but he does anyway because it gives him something to do and to look at while he waits to suggest: “Mine?” 

“Yes, Crowley, I presumed we’d go there after dinner.” Aziraphale’s cheeks are blazing with it. “We…do rather often.” 

Often enough, really. They have six thousand years to make up for, after all. Of course, as much as most of their evenings end in Crowley’s bed, it’s often just lying there, hands brushing back hair and trading sweet words and stories and smiles—Crowley wrapped around him as close as he can be because _really_ he waited six thousand years for this. It’s been so frequent that Crowley finds it difficult to lie in the middle of his bed now, he just sprawls on His Side, waiting for the angel to the take the other and fill the gap. 

But that’s not what he means, now. He doesn’t mean killing a few bottles of wine at the Ritz, stumbling back to his and reliving 1648. “I mean, dinner at mine,” he says. “Oh no, don’t give me that look.”

It’s too late, Aziraphale is giving him the look. The sort of spreading smile that comes whenever Crowley does something _nice_ without being asked. It sparkles up to his eye and the whole look just _drips_ with love. So sickeningly sweet. He flaps a hand at him, tilting his head back as if to wave it away. “I’m not _cooking_ for you,” he huffs. “Having someone else do that. Just what humans do, isn’t it? Candles and wine and no one but us?” 

Aziraphale won’t stop giving him That Look, so Crowley just groans and turns on his heel, stalking to the other side of the room to pour himself into an overstuffed chair, poking at whatever Aziraphale had been reading. Aziraphale is still giving him That Look; well, he’s giving it to his cup but Crowley can feel it. It’s meant for him.

“I think it sounds lovely,” Aziraphale says, voice pillow-soft and sweet. “What time should I be there?” 

Crowley shrugs, both with his shoulder and with a brief twitch of his lips. “Whenever,” he says, trying to sound incredibly aloof and not at all like this is anything of any sort of significance. It isn’t. He just thought it’d be not _nice_ but...nice. “How about I pop by, pick you up when it’s all settled?” 

Aziraphale crosses the room and leans down, pressing his lips to the side of Crowley’s head. “I’ll be waiting. And don’t let me forget my coat this time.” 

Crowley cranes his neck up after him for a proper kiss, which he gets before he shoves himself back up and heads off, planning quite the romantic evening for the two of them.

He’d parked right up alongside the shop in a space that wasn’t a space except when he was parked there. He was distracted, as he often was, thinking about what exactly he just left behind—soft lips, soft skin, soft hair, soft voices, all the right sort of things that make him want to double back and just spend the day there instead, lurking in the rafters and watching Azirapahle work silently (which he did. Frequently. Aziraphale hated when he discovered him).

Aziraphale consumes his thoughts by the time he heads outside. He's wrapped up in him impossibly as he reaches for the handle, so much so that he doesn’t even notice Hastur behind him. 

The gag forces itself between his teeth before he can shout at him, someone bringing something _very_ hard to his knee. He throws his head, sunglasses flying off as the ground races up to meet him. His eyes search or the bookshop, Aziraphale’s name muffled against the rank fabric. 

he tries to scream, to _warn_ him, wrenching about in Hastur’s grip as another demon binds his hand—sigils? Really? He can’t even change forms—in the shop, a shadow moves and Crowley tries, he tries so _hard._

Aziraphale. _Aziraphale, run._

He’s still trying to warn him from around the fabric when metal clangs the back of his head. _Aziraphale,_ he thinks, vision going spotty. 

He comes to tied to a chair, wincing at the sounds and smells around him. Hell. Cool. He tries to blink back into focus, but it’s a bit rough. “Hi guys,” he croaks, once his eyes stop seeing in triplicate and he can tell that he’s in trouble. He tries to keep cool, cool relaxed. “Feels like we’ve done this before,” he tugs at the binds, “Yeah—honestly you’ve got to shake things up, more. Didn’t we already establish that holy water, not gonna work?” 

Beelzebub doesn’t look that amused. But, in Crowley’s defense, Beelzebub _never_ looks amused. They just sort of buzz. Angrily. Which is exactly what they’re doing now. “Crowley,” they croak. “We’ve come to a decision regarding you insurr—” Beelzebub buzzes a bit too much, and pauses to right their voice. Crowley leans forward, ear pointed towards him. 

“Sorry, what?”

“We’ve come to a decision regarding your insurrection.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes, half-slumping in his seat. “Really? Again, c’mon,” he sits up and looks around. “C’mon, guys—we just did this. Holy water, it’s not gonna work, is it?” Of course it would work, of course it would _fucking_ work because he’s not Aziraphale right now. 

But no need telling them that. Beelzebub stands from their throne, walking right back up to Crowley. “No holy water this time. We’ve decided you’re more useful to us alive.”

Hastur growls from behind Crowley. “Some of us decided. I still think turning you to sludge is a better use of our time.”

Crowley, in all his wisdom, bites his tongue instead of saying something about that. Beelzebub shoots Hastur a look, one that Crowley reads as _keep it shut or lose your mouth-privileges._ “Your problem was the angel. Heaven’s taking care of him.” Beelzebub leans down and Crowley’s chest seizes tight. 

 _Aziraphale._ God, no—Sat—just _no._ He pulls his wrists, jostling the chair enough to tilt it into two legs, but hands keep him from tumbling over. 

“And we’re taking care of you.”

 

Aziraphale  
_Fourteen Months Ago  
Eight Months After The End of the World_

Funny how the end of the world changes things, especially when the end of the world never actually happens. Aziraphale had been mourning his shop in Crowley’s flat, had gripped his hand tight all the way from Tadfield on the bus. 

He hadn’t meant to do anything but sit there and try not to think about all of his first-editions becoming kindling, but Crowley had — well, he was having an awful night. Aziraphale had struggled to keep up with the chain of his drunken raving and rambling, something about God’s Ineffable Plan and it starting in the garden and Her making him like this. Something about fire and pain. 

About them and destiny and togetherness. Aziraphale didn’t intend to kiss him but, well, he did. And it was rather good, if he does say so himself. Just the sort of _good_ that made him want more. And so, later that night, they kissed more. And talked more (calmly, now that Crowley had something else to focus on) and kissed more. 

And there was a fair amount of touching — and not just for their body-swap. 

And once Heaven and Hell was done with them, well there was more kissing to be had. More touching to be had. More...everything to be had. Every day, Crowley was in the shop, every evening they did dinner and went back to his to sit and talk and lie and touch. And kiss. Quite a bit. 

They’d sit, Aziraphale would read until Crowley was bored enough to start bothering him, they’d do dinner, go back to his, and whathaveyou. Or sometimes, Aziraphale would close shop early, take a book to Crowley’s and let him tend to his plants while they did much the same thing, but at Crowley’s instead of his. He’s glad to be going to his tonight, glancing to the door that Crowley had slipped out of not too long ago.

This whole _apart_ thing felt awfully unnecessary to him. 

Crowley had mentioned a few times in the sort of in-passing that feels incredibly premeditated, how much he enjoys the idea of getting a cottage somewhere and keeping his plants and being able to lie out under the sun. _How do you like the sound of that, angel,_ he’d asked, and Aziraphale had carefully considered his next words before responding, _as long as there’s a place for my books._

He’d thought on it for a long while, musing over what it would be like to get out of London go somewhere less crowded. He’d be sad, he thinks, to lose the park and not be near the Ritz. But they could come back. Visit. 

He looks up to the ceiling, and around. He’d give Crowley plenty of places to hide, if he had his options. As much as he _hated_ coming in from the backroom — having given his latest favorite  book few hours of time — to find a lazing snake snoozing in front of the fire instead of his four-limbed...whatever-they-were, he did find it charming. He’d look up every once in a while, when Crowley was being too quiet, and spot him wrapped around the banisters on the second floor, liquid-gold eyes peering down from the darkness. Watching. Monitoring. 

 _Yes,_ he mused, if they decided to migrate somewhere else — they’d need rafters. Someplace he can crawl away and be in the cool darkness. 

As much as Aziraphale loves his company, he knows how much Crowley needs that solitude every once in a while. The thought of his snake, his beloved, long-limbed, gorgeous snake, draws a smile across his features. 

He turns a page in his book, settling in to read until Crowley arrives. 

The sun casts a warm glow through the shop as it sets, and it’s only when it’s been gone for quite some time that Aziraphale realizes how late it’s gotten. He puts a bookmark in and closes the cover, checking for voicemails and then looking around (making sure to keep his eyes at the ceiling to ensure he doesn’t miss his snake). 

Funny. But in the sense that it’s not actually funny but incredibly concerning. 

He calls and Crowley doesn’t pick up. He’d only ever not picked up once before, with demons staring him down and holy water burning uncomfortably close to his feet. He calls again, and then for a third time, leaving a very testy message. “Crowley, it’s getting late. If you’d like to do something else tonight, it would be nice if you would let me know.” 

And then, when he’s not responded for two hours. “I’m starting to get worried, dear. Please call me back?”

And again, at half-past midnight. “Crowley, _please._ Just let me know you’re alright? _”_

When that is rendered pointless, he wrings his hands together, pacing the length of the shop a few times before deciding to just go over to his flat himself. The moment he steps outside, he knows something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The Bentley is still parked there, glinting desperately in the moonlight. “Oh, dear,” Aziraphale breathes. “Oh, no, oh no.” Crowley would never just _leave_ her. 

He hurries over, his heart thuddering to a screeching halt as something else winks up from the ground. “Oh Crowley, dear,” he whispers as he bends down, scooping up the cracked sunglasses. “God, please.” It’s a whispered prayer with eyes squeezed tight around the tears that threaten to pour. 

God, please, listen to him. Please. Don’t let this happen, not to them, not to them _now._ They just...they just got what they wanted. A dash of happiness, a dash of peace and comfort. Eight months, not even a full turn around the sun. 

He translocates right to Crowley’s door (something he rarely does now that Crowley drives him most places and he likes to think it’s mostly that and not the raw fear festering away inside him that leaves him dizzy and light-headed). He lets himself in — not even _knocking —_ and oh. God may’ve been the wrong entity to ask.

Aziraphale would have been concerned had the flat been empty. Cold and untouched, would’ve made his stomach boil with terror at what had befallen his beloved demon. But the flat is not empty, three figures stand there, hands held before themselves. 

“Hey Aziraphale. We’ve been waiting for _you,”_ Gabriel points, “for a while. Come on in, it’s pretty uh, horrible in here.” His nose crinkles as he gestures. “Honestly? What do you see in this — you know what? Not important.” He waves it away and Sandalphon and Uriel start to move in, making Aziraphale take a few worried steps back. “What _is_ important, is you, Aziraphale.” 

“Me? Well — I don’t — I don’t know about that, right? We’ve already been through this, haven’t we? With the kidnapping and the...hellfire. We don’t need to do this again? We sort of...decided, right? Forgiveness that’s,” he points up, swallowing thickly. “Her thing?” 

“It’s not ours,” Sandalphon sneers. “We found a suitable punishment for _you.”_

“We found your problem,” Uriel echoes, eyes narrow slits of rage as they circle behind him, trapping him. 

Gabriel hasn’t stopped smiling, but he has produced a string. He twirls it around his fingers for a bit. “The demon, Aziraphale. Honestly, we shouldn’t have blamed you for all of it. You were down here too long, went native, got yourself poisoned by him. We’re going to fix you. Make you _better,”_ Gabriel says, voice laden down with faux-sincerity and concern. Aziraphale fixates on the string, dread filling him. 

“What did you do to Crowley?” He asks, trying to keep his voice sharp. He fails, it wobbles and shakes and his tongue tastes like fear and dread. 

Gabriel purses his lips, glancing around at Crowley’s flat. “Us? Nothing, not really our job to handle him. _Hell_ on the other hand, well, we don’t really associate with them that much but we wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get in the way of your penance. We didn’t ask a ton of questions, did we?” 

Uriel shakes their head, letting it fall a bit to the side. “Maybe they’ll give the holy water a second go.”

“Or feed him to a Hellhound,” Sandalphon offers. 

Aziraphale is breathless, stepping back away from them. “No,” he says, trying to force something that isn’t a terrified look to his face. “That’s not...they wouldn’t. Holy water didn’t _work.”_

“Funny, isn’t it,” Gabriel hums, holding up the bit of sting. It looks innocuous, innocent. 

Aziraphale couldn’t be more terrified.

There are some punishments only whispered. Angels that don’t follow the rules Fall, but God needs to instigate the process, She needs to stamp every exile with her approval before they could go running each other off with flaming swords. But no one ever really discussed the appropriate punishment for angels who disobey, but refuse to Fall and refuse to die. 

“Either way, he’s gone, but, you know, you have to do some penance first. We can’t just,” he flaps a hand. “Let you off the hook! What kind of message would that send to your fellow angels? Not a very good one, Aziraphale. And as it stands you’ve been pretty good at avoiding retribution.” 

“Gabriel, _please,_ I only did what—”

“What? What you thought was right?” 

Aziraphale doesn’t have an answer that isn’t _yes._ Gabriel tuts, taking an end of the string in each finger. “You went native, Aziraphale so you’re going to live amongst them for a bit. See what they’re _really_ like.”

Oh, _God._ He scrambles forward, but Sandalphon steps between them. “Gabriel, you _can’t.”_

“Oh, but I can. And you know what Aziraphale? I think you’ll thank me later.” 

He ties a knot in the string and Aziraphale feels it immediately. It wraps around him, forcing him to his knees as it chokes him off from his essence. “Don’t,” he wheezes, as the invisible ropes pull tighter around him, feeling like they’re binding his wings back down into his body. Gabriel crouches in front of him.

“While you’re out, we’ll go ahead and undo what that demon did. We’ll come get you when we think you’re ready.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here is the What Happened aspect of this! Not gonna lie, a LOT of you got this right off the bat, it was so exciting for me, honestly, to read them, clicking my fingers together and chortling. Y'all crushed the "what the fuck is going on" game!


	9. Chapter 9

Crowley wasn’t entirely sure what he expected. 

Maybe for Aziraphale to open his eyes, blink a few times then kiss him with all the same raw passion. Maybe a spark or two. 

Then maybe all the memories he was missing would flood back and that would be that. All right and done and then they could get dinner and pretend like nothing happened.

He doesn’t get that. Of course not, couldn’t be that easy now could it? 

Instead, he gets a blinding-white light to knock him right on his arse. He hisses, throwing up a hand to block it as it sears against the back of his lids. The hairs on his arm sizzle and smoke, skin starting to blister and burn under the raw heat of holy light. It isn’t just like standing on consecrated ground — it’s like he’s rolling around on it. Somewhere in a desk drawer far away in a Head Office, a knotted piece of string burns itself to dust.

It burns hot, white and immediate — and for a moment Crowley thinks it might actually kill him. Or discorperate him. Or both. 

He tries to squint at it, but even from behind his sunglasses all he can see is a twisting, shifting, confounding shape blurring between gold and blue and white, light exploding from a thousand points across it’s not-really-there body and absolutely-there wings. 

Then, with the same violent swiftness, it stopped — leaving only a blistering quiet and a gut-wrenching _thud._

Crowley opens his eyes slowly, blinking and squinting as a the too-bright aura of lingering holy energy and the blinding glean of pure-white wings stretching out still makes it hurt to look at him. 

The wings beat, once, then again, stretching as far as they can — as if they’ve been caged away for far too long. They sweep books and pictures and baubles from shelves and topple lamps. The owner of the wings, hunched on his knees in the middle of the sitting room, looks up, lips parting and pursuing. “Oh,” he says, fingers gripping at his hair. “Dear...I…” His hands fall, limp and he looks for a moment like he’s going to faint. Crowley bolts up and over, hands on his shoulders.  
  
“Angel,” he breathes, Aziraphale blinking, foggy eyes getting clearer with every sweep of long lashes. 

“Crowley—Oh,” he gasps, pulling the demon into his arms, wings swinging forward with a whole new wave of knocking things over. “Crowley, you—you’re...My dear boy.” Aziraphale pulls back, his hands on Crowley’s shoulders. “I thought you were dead I thought Hell, I saw your sunglasses on the pavement and the Bentley, oh dear your car, oh _no my bookshop.”_

“It’s alright,” Crowley says, pressing his forehead to Aziraphale’s and just...just being there for a moment. Every inch of him is exhausted—from what he doesn’t know. He’s just so tired and so very incredibly happy. “It’s alright, angel. I’ve got you.” 

Crowley kisses him again and again, cupping Aziraphale’s cheeks and just feeling the press of his skin beneath his own. So familiar and yet achingly lost at the same time. 

Aziraphale pulls back after a moment, still looking wobbly. “Sorry, my whole...essence is feeling a bit…” he shakes his head and his wings shiver. Somewhere, a little bit outside the flat, a small garden bursts up from the pavement. A bit further out, a flat tire miraculously fixes itself, and a woman finds her lost wallet in the bottom of her purse. 

“Dear,” he breathes. “I’m not…” He looks down at himself, then up at Crowley. “Dear Lord what are you wearing?” 

Frowning, Crowley looks down at himself and oh — right. He touches the soft, off-white, jacket. Immediately, it vanishes and he’s wearing his usual style.“I saw it in the shop and I think...I think it reminded me of you. Even before I met you—well, before I thought I met you. I should ask you the same question, honestly? All these blacks and greys — it looks _terrible._ Change it back.” 

“I don’t miracle my clothes like some of us,” Aziraphale huffs. “I don’t even know where they are! I think all I have in this flat are… cassocks? Oh good Lord I was Catholic.” Aziraphale shudders, frowning and snaps and he’s wearing his normal attire, miracled for now. “Must’ve been a funny joke for Gabriel.”

A snap, and the coat—which Crowley may or may not have left in his car, is in his hands, offered, gently, to the angel. “You left this in my flat,” he says. “I...Hell must’ve missed it.”

Gingerly, Aziraphale takes it, touching the worn edges. “You kept it?” He asks, voice a little weighed down by something. “Did you remember? Heaven they, they bound my powers they made me _forget.”_

Hastur grabbed me outside the shop, Hell made me forget too. I think thought they could remake me into the demon they wanted, load ‘a pricks.” He says, throat thick and stomach churning with Hellfire. “But I couldn’t...I tried. A few times to toss it but something wouldn’t let go. Like I couldn’t _really_ let you go. Even if I didn’t know what that was.” 

Aziraphale looks around the room, a bit like it’s been caught up in a tornado with all the broken bits strewn around by his wings. “Clearly I couldn’t let you go either.” He plucks up a bronze snake ring-holder, touching down its head softly. “Thank you,” he says, voice laden with sudden emotions. 

He pulls Crowley into another long embrace. “For what,” Crowley mumbles, pressing his face into the crook of his neck and breathing him in.

“You brought me back.” Aziraphale says, those white wings circling Crowley to keep him in place. They don’t usually do this, but extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary things. Like wings pressing against Crowley — making him suppress a hiss as they press against his tucked away ones. 

He grips at the back of his jacket, hoping beyond hope that Aziraphale doesn’t pull away. “This was entirely self-motivated. Wanted you back. Entirely selfish of me.” He pulls himself away just enough to cup Aziraphale’s cheek. “I will tear Beelzebub and Gabriel apart with my bare hands,” he promises. “I won’t even need holy water to destroy them for what they did to you.” 

Aziraphale bumps his forehead against Crowley’s. “Let’s not talk about that now,” he breathes, holding Crowley close to him. He squeezes his eyes shut. “I dreamed of you, I couldn’t stop. When I saw you outside the church I had to—I had to talk to you. Every _inch_ of me wanted to reach out and touch you and I didn’t know why.” He laughs, the sort of bitter laugh that he knows nothing is alright. “I thought I was going mad. But I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t scared.”

Crowley swallows down all the things he wants to say. His head aches, from putting together all the memories. “Have you got any wine?” He asks, voice a touch hoarse. 

It’s a long afternoon in the ruined flat, conversation starts and falters — touches come and go and come again, more often than not clinging to one another as they try their best to sort out what was true and what was false. Aching ink-black wings wrap over white ones as Crowley’s legs twine with Aziraphale’s, his face pressed to the crook of his neck as he breathed in the scent of Eden and rocksalt and Heaven and Home. 

Aziraphale croons at him, rubs the aches from Crowley’s wings and chides him between careful kisses for doing something so reckless, so _stupid,_ as getting himself hit by a car. 

_You couldn’t have miracled it to stop?_

_I wasn’t thinking. Well I was thinking, but only about stopping_ you _from getting hurt._

Night comes, blanketing a content sort of darkness over them, then goes. With dusk came stillness, a quiet solitude and whispers and promises. With dawn comes retribution.

Gabriel arrives with a bolt of holy lightning, grimacing as he steps right onto the half-shattered snakehead from a rather ugly lamp Aziraphale had collected. “How did I know this would be trouble?” He sighs, like he’s dealing with two disobedient toddlers he’s left without proper supervision instead of two incredibly old and incredibly powerful beings.

They’d untangled from each other as soon as the first hint of _something_ hit the air, angel and demon skittering up to their feet. Gabriel’s shoulders sag as he throws his head back with a put-upon sigh. “Alright, Aziraphale, come on.” He gestures, waving a hand towards himself.

Aziraphale glances at Crowley, then back at his boss, then back at Crowley, a confused furrow forming between his brows. “Why on Earth would I do that?”

“Uhhh, because I’m telling you to?” Gabriel says, as if that were not only the obvious answer, but also the only answer. “Now come on. Next time we’ll drop you far _far_ from this little...snake. That’s what you are, right? A snake? You sure you’re not like a maggot or something? Lizard? Doesn’t matter” Gabriel gestures again. “Get on with it.”

Crowley’s lips purse as he shakes his head, taking a half-step forward before Aziraphale’s arm crosses over his chest to stop him. “You’re injured, dearest—which don’t think we are finished talking about how incredibly reckless, dangerous, and touching that was.” He says, before circling the sofa, wings raised just a touch.

“I’m not going anywhere with you and you are not mucking around in my head again. No binding my essence, no making me _forget_ anything,” he says, voice clear-cut and crisp. Crowley fails to suppress the shiver that races down from his raised brows all the way to the heels of his boots. 

Gabriel’s jaw clicks as he tenses it, just a moment the furious spark in his eyes drips down to draw a scowl over his lips. “That’s what you said last time, Aziraphale. Clearly, didn’t have much impact. Now I’m ordering you to shut up and come with me.”

Last time? Crowley’s stomach does things a stomach shouldn’t do and Aziraphale steps back, a noise rising from low in his throat. “How many times—”

“This is so annoying _,”_ Gabriel groans, “A couple. The first time you figured it out in a day or so but the lizard hadn’t. This time, clearly took longer so we’re working the kinks out.”

“You,” Aziraphale pauses, looking up and taking a steadying breath. From behind him, Crowley’s nose crinkled against the sharp scent of angelic fury rolling off him. Like clean-cut grass and ozone. Pleasant to most people, but a bit stinging to a demon. “You’ve done this to me twice now.” 

If Crowley was on the other side of Aziraphale, he’d probably see the angry thin line, the coldness of betrayal in his eyes. The wings twitched and Aziraphale steadied himself with a deep, full, breath. “You will not do it again, Gabriel.”

“I don’t think you really have a _say_ in that, Aziraphale.”

“I do,” He says, nose up to the ceiling. “Because _this_ time I realized something. I did not know what choices I was making when I couldn’t remember what I was, I didn’t know that every decision I made for nearly a year and a half put me closer to Crowley. It wasn’t premeditated decision-making to return lost memories, it was something else. It was a pull that I could not otherwise explain, guided by a feeling I recognized.”

“What? Half-assed rebellion and a desire to fill your vessel with gross matter?” 

“Love. _Her_ love. I never felt strayed from a path, which leads me to conclude that this,” he points all around him, his wings spread, catching the early rising sun and casting the glow back out around them. “This was meant to happen.”

Crowley’s victorious, self-satisfied, grin only spreads so far as he peeks around the angel’s wings, catching something burning in Gabriel’s gaze. “I thought the Ineffable Plan was _ineffable,_ Aziraphale. Can’t have you going around claiming you’re speaking for Her personally.”

Before Crowley could think of something, anything, to spit at the six-foot-something prick in the scarf—Aziraphale has an answer. His head tilts, a bit like a curious pet, and he says, with no pretension or vitriol. “Why don’t you ask Her?” 

Gabriel, for a second, sounds like he’s choking. Aziraphale barrels on through. “Lots of time, loads of time and energy spent on this. Have you asked Her what She thinks? If She wants this?”

A step forward that drives Gabriel back two. “If She says I must, then I will go with you without fuss, Gabriel.”

Crowley, unable to keep his mouth shut for this long, can’t help but interject, fiery hair appearing over the top of one of Aziraphale’s wings. “Yeah, this is pretty embarrassing for your lot. Two failed attempts at punishment?” His face scrunches. “Wouldn’t admit it to anyone. Really reflects poorly on your disciplinary techniques.” He ducks back down as Aziraphale shoots him a filthy look. 

“This isn’t the end of this, Aziraphale,” Gabriel says, after a few pained moments of silence. “And you, worm...snake...thing. Whatever you are. _Demon._ Don’t think Hell doesn’t have something worse planned for you.”

Crowley wiggles his fingers in a dual message of _fuck off_ and _goodbye._

And Gabriel is gone, just as quick as he arrived. Aziraphale’s wings droop and he falls, exhausted, against the back of the couch. 

“He’s not wrong,” Crowley admits, now feeling _twice_ as exhausted and four times as sober as he’d like to be. “Beelzebub’ll be here next. They’ll have thoughts and...tortures to inflict.” He heaves a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Aziraphale reaches out a hand, grasping Crowley’s. For a moment, both of them remember a bus on a cool summer night. It said Oxford but it went to London anyway. Two hands gripped one another, holding on as if the other might slip away in a moment.

“We’ll face that together then, too,” Aziraphale says, voice sturdy and firm. “Six thousand years of _us._ They can’t keep us apart that easily.”

Crowley squeezes his hand back. It’s a blazing sort of hot, the kind that should burn. “I mean, they could try but,” He only grips Aziraphale’s hand tighter. “Hate to break it to you, angel, but you can’t get rid of me that easy.” 

 _Nine Months Later  
_ _Two Years and Four Months after the World Did Not End_

The little cottage had all three of the things that Crowley had wanted and all four of the things Aziraphale desired. For Crowley that is a garden, a room to be adapted into a library, and a sunroom. For Aziraphale, it is all of those, plus dark rafters for his snake to take his moments in quiet solitude. At least he thinks he needed that. The thought had lurked around his mind as they were discussing what sort of home should crop up in South Downs without much thought given by the neighbors. 

Obviously an elderly woman had lived there before, and once she passed—surrounded by friends and family—a pair of middle-aged men in a sleek black car arrived before the _For Sale_ sign could touch the untamed grass. 

Getting out of the city felt right, after Beelzebub got a similar dressing-down from Crowley, backed up by Aziraphale of course. He even plucked the question right from Aziraphale’s lips. _Why don’t you ask the Boss if this is really how he wants you spending your resources?_ There was no promise of leaving them alone, but this was different. He could feel it. Gabriel hadn’t ever come back, Beelzebub stopped sending messages. Crowley was fairly certain they'd been terminated but, well, if there was any job he was more than ready to be fired from it was that one. 

Once the Administration had been sent away, all that was left was to pick up the pieces. Easier said than done, really. 

There are lots of walks, lots of evenings spent sitting silently in the park; hours passing before either one of them dares to ask a question that the other can only half-sure answer. Sorting out what’s real from what was imagined, what they’d done versus what they’d dreamed. 

Aziraphale sat, for hours, on the floor of his bookshop. Crowley cursed Heaven to Hell and back up again when he realized they’d taken over a year where they could’ve been together. Nearly twice the amount of time they were together proper. They kissed, they touched, they held fast to one another. 

It took some doing to untangle the tangles, to fall back into the steps they were in before, to tell stories that both agreed were right and true. 

They were still doing it in the cottage, really. Alternating between unpacking and arguing about where things should go and Aziraphale organizing his library and Crowley menacing his garden—they squeeze in time to lie there and think and talk.

“We raised a child,” Crowley says, looking up at him. “I was the nanny, you were a gardener.” 

Aziraphale nods, fingers tangled loosely with Crowley’s. “We did. We fought a lot, I was _terrible_ to you during the early years, wasn’t I?”

“Bit of a tosser but I loved you anyway,” Crowley admits, blinking his un-shaded eyes up at him. He likes lying like this, his chin on Aziraphale’s chest, watching him thinking and remember and breathe. Their legs tangled together with the sheets, the sunlight streaming in and warming their skin. 

“When?” Aziraphale asks. “I remember when I fell in love with you, clear as day.”

Crowley stretches his legs out, moving up so his face is right at home in the crook of Aziraphale’s throat again. He can feel the unnecessary but extremely welcome thrum of his pulse. “First moment I met you, when you told me you gave your sword away. They were kicked out of Eden, sent off to fend for themselves and die—you were in charge of making sure they never came back, that they served their punishment.” He takes in a breath, kissing the underside of the angel’s jaw. “And you gave them your sword.” 

Aziraphale’s lips curl at the edges, just a hint of a smile as he looks down to where Crowley is slithering his way up for a kiss. “What about you?” Crowley asks.

“You told me I couldn’t do the wrong thing,” he says, easily. “You said that I must’ve done the right thing, when no one else would’ve.” 

“I did,” Crowley says, dragging the sharp edge of his nose down the soft line of Aziraphale’s jaw. “But that’s not what I asked.”

“It is,” Aziraphale says, drawing his fingertips down the length of Crowley’s curving spine. “I fell in love with you then, I didn’t realize for years that...I was _in_ love with you. But...when you saved my books, when you walked across consecrated ground for me…” His voice trails off and Crowley stares, unblinking, up at him. 

His chest hurts, but in the best way. “And then there was the first time we talked about Noah’s Ark,” he says, “you were funny. You make a joke.” 

Aziraphale frowns. “I didn’t think I did, those were very serious days, Crowley. Was it when the unicorn ran off?”

He shakes his head, “not...when you were a priest. Over tea. You made a joke about zebra’s walking with God. I didn’t know it then but, I was starting to fall in love with you all over again. Really inconvenient, when you think about it.” 

That short little smile is back again, hovering around the edges as Aziraphale gently guides Crowley up for a proper kiss. “That was about the time I started again too.”

It goes like that, a back and forth, a steady sort of re-learning that takes days, then months, then longer. The garden that comprises the vast majority of the land outside the cottage flourishes over the years, under Crowley’s carefully precise hand. 

They consider it more or less done by the end of a full year. No one bothers them anymore. Not for punishment or retribution. Not for reports or temptations or miracles. That’s not to say they haven’t planned for it. There’s a box, in the library, hidden behind a stack of Oscar Wilde plays. _In Case of Emergency,_ scrawled in a loose, looping print over the top. Inside are two volumes, painstakingly tracing six thousand years and one years of history. 

_We’ll never forget again._

Crowley wouldn’t admit to reading it sometimes, just for the memories. Just like he wouldn’t admit to seeing his bookmark move places when he was gone. 

Outside, it’s one of the last nice days of the year. The sort of cool breeze that pushes away the last of the oppressive-sticky summer heat. The setting sun casts a blazing glow over everything it touches, rolling sweet molten gold over the garden. Crowley watches, from the doorway of the sunroom, soaking in the moment as Aziraphale stretches out over a blanket under the apple tree Crowley thought it was hilarious to plant, a picnic basket by his side. 

He’d promised him, in the car, decades ago. They both remembered that. 

That cold place in his chest, the empty, aching, void, overflows with warmth as he steps out into the garden, taking his place under the apple tree at Aziraphale’s side. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gently blows a trumpet*  
> It's the end! Which means now I can officially change the tags and descriptions to reflect what's actually going on inside the story (those of you who stuck with us until the end were privy to the slowly-sinking in nightmares and surprises)
> 
> I really hope you all enjoyed the story, and I am, as ever, eternally thankful to all of you who read it. Keep your eyes peeled for an epilogue where they fuck. (I'm sorry _tenderly re-learn each other's bodies_ ) 
> 
> Catch me on [Tumblr](https://crowzi.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> The pianist misses a key, hiccuping an otherwise flawless performance.
> 
> (Not Yet) Frequently Asked Questions:  
> Q: Why is Crowley wearing white?  
> A: You'll see.
> 
> Q: Why is Azra a Catholic priest?  
> A: Authorial Decisions Based On Familiar Content
> 
> Q: What is going on?  
> A: :) 
> 
> Q: More ???  
> A: I try to update on Fridays and Mondays. I'm pretty far ahead in terms of writing, and I'm not sure if, once I finish actually WRITING it, I'll be able to restrain myself - so it'll probably go out the window as an update method but who knows
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://tooeasilyconsidered.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hipsteroric)


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